Who is Farhan Lalji?

Just finishing Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness and just finishing the NCAA basketball tournament. What do these two events have in common? Well in it Taleb discusses how we rely on past performance too much, how survivor and hindsight biases effect our decisions and the value we place on things.

I filled out two tournament brackets and with the knowledge that never before have more then two number 1 seeds made the final four. The phrase “Never before have more then two number 1 seeds made the final four” played over and over again in my mind as I filled out my brackets.

Imagine my dismay as I watched Kansas beat Davidson last night to ensure that four number 1 seeds were in the final four.

My life is filled with semi-randomness at the moment. The book made for timely reading indeed.

While looking at a book on my desk a colleague said “I thought you would be using Amazon’s new Kindle”. I said it wasn’t for me, and I can’t see myself ever reading a book digitally. We talked a bit about the experience and how it’s different from music online and I came up with an analogy that I think fits.

With music it’s difficult to experience a concert digitally; it’s an experience, and a long experience at that. Listening to songs works, but I can’t see digital concerts replacing the real thing. With reading I think it’s the same. Articles are the singles of literature, reading online works, short bursts good experience. Books are like a concert, longer sustained experience where digital isn’t as good as the real thing.

I know I’ve blogged about digital reading before and I’ve strongly felt the Kindle wouldn’t really take off, despite strong sales data, I’m happy that I’ve found myself an analogy that makes me feel better about my instincts on the medium.

Jason Fried over at SVN pointed an article on why the internet won’t be nirvana by Cliff Stoll from 1995. In it Stoll makes the point,

“Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople”.

That really got me thinking about salespeople. Could there be a more unauthentic role in capitalism then that of the traditional salesperson? I get shivers just when I hear the word.

But the internet is changing the sales perspective. No longer is it a person who goes around knocking on doors or cold-calling people. Everyone is becoming a salesperson.

I think in part it goes back to Umair’s point about interaction; everyone can interact with a product at a minimal cost. And then if you add the fact that sharing information has become super cheap and easy too, well then everyone becomes a potential salesperson.

By talking about NCAA basketball on my status on Facebook, by adding a bookshelf widget, by writing about 37signals on my blog, by adding feedback on a book on Amazon, by… you get the point. I’m a salesperson and so too is everyone else on the web. So if everyone is a salesperson 2.0 then no one needs to be a traditional salesperson and a salesperson is no longer needed. Finally, no more shivers.

My definition of a portfolio is having a range of investments where risk is diversified. If you’re investing, you’re likely to be taking this type of approach. Venture Capital and other industries are likely to take this approach. When recently considering life decisions I decided that maybe taking a portfolio approach to life isn’t a bad thing.

In short, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. When this comes to career planning or goals it leads to a non-linear career path.

Non-linear career paths are awesome. It means you go from venture to venture, from idea to idea, industry to industry. But the goals should be set. For me, early on it was to earn a certain salary or to pay off debts, but as I’ve get older my goals have changed, but the approach to reaching them shouldn’t. You have a number of interests and you keep yourself open to whichever opportunities arise to follow whichever interests.

Whether it’s a Taoist approach, a Zen approach or a portfolio approach, whatever, it’s all about openness with a focus on what’s in the horizon.

(Thanks Vinay for the title inspiration)

Acquisitions and strategy

Web acquisitions are not strategy. Acquisitions are usually financial gymnastics showing value. Personally, I think when a big company buys a smaller innovative company there’s a good chance that innovation in the acquired company dies. Google was guilty of this with its acquisitions of Blogger (nothing new there, Wordpress, six apart innovative), Yahoo’s been guilty as well. And AOL, AOL is probably the guiltiest of the lot.

When I read that AOL had bought Bebo my immediate thought was, well they’ve just handed the social networking industry to Facebook. Facebook’s kept its independence and as a result has been cutting edge. Bebo was showing some fight, but my guess is that this purchase is going to kill any incentive Bebo has to fight and innovate.

Strategy is seeing where there are gaps, filling those gaps with a superior product or service. Strategy means seeing where you can add value and create value and then executing like crazy, it’s not acquiring a company that does a decent job filling it with cash and then watching as its motivation to innovate disappears.

Henry Blodget and Kara Swisher have two great videos on Yahoo!’s Tech Ticker.

On the first they’re discussing the mentality of Google’s founders in comparison to other founders. Their DNA and how they’ve moulded the company in their own image. Basically, how they’ve kept it authentic.

My take, well duh, authenticity and value people, authenticity and value!

Second one is looking at how a lack of innovation has ended up biting Dell in the behind. You have to invest in research and think long and convince the market to understand the value of research. HP, Apple and Google do this well, the list of companies who don’t is too long.

Enjoy the videos embedded below.

Jeremy Zawodny has an interesting post about meetings being laptop free, and this allowing people to focus more. I like this idea and enjoy meetings where everyone is focused.  I think the debate needs to be widened a bit. I get really annoyed when I’m having a conversation, out for dinner, or in a meeting, presenting something and people are checking their email/using their Blackberries – an aside is it Blackberries or Blackberrys? Sorry RIM if I’ve broken your brand guidelines.Checking your email, while having a conversation with someone else, is like having a separate conversation at the same time. Or reading a paper or a book while conversing with other people, it’s not a very nice feeling for the other people you’re with.

I understand we’ve been granted technology that helps us stay communicated with multiple people, have multiple tasks on the go and multi-tasking like this is good, revolutionary even. But, if you’re sitting in a meeting, having dinner with people and you’re checking email or using your blackberry instead should you really be out with the people you’re with? Do you really need to be in this meeting?

So far I’ve resisted having a blackberry, I’m connected enough, feel like I respond to emails in time, can wait till I get home or back to my desk, and that’s okay by me. I know that I rarely offend people but there have been times when I’ve been with people and I want to throw their Blackberries out the window. Am I alone in this?

Have we become so dependent on real time communication that we sacrifice our basic levels of respect for one another? I hope not.

I read a great article on Evan Williams, creator of blogger and twitter in Fast Company over the weekend. Immediately, the word authentic came into my head and I can’t get it out of my head. I started thinking about companies and things I like and found overall there was a sense of authenticity among them all. But authenticity isn’t enough, there needs to be a genuine market for what someone is trying to do.

Authenticity is the difficult one to nail, how do you know if someone is authentic or not. Personally, I think it boils down to motives and passion. If someone is passionate about what they’re doing and has clear good motives they are likely to be doing something with authenticity. I’m sure there has been other academic research into keeping it real, but here’s my contribution.

I decided to put together a 2×2 matrix, showing authenticity and value. I believe people and organisations can fit in to one of the four boxes depending whether or not they offer a valued good or service and whether or not they act with integrity and genuinely i.e. authenticity. So a company can be successful, but if their not authentic I believe their success won’t be sustainable.

I’m not going to say where I think certain companies and individuals fit in this 2×2, but feel free to play along at home.

It’s funny how when you’re trying to raise capital for a start up an investor, whether VC or angel or any other investor, will probably want to know how big the opportunity is. How scalable is the business?

To be effective and successful though you have to execute, and to execute you have to provide someone with a great experience. This requires focus.

These two processes seem like opposites to me. So as an entrepreneur you have to simultaneously be thinking about how to execute your operation at a very granular level, but how to scale or ramp up the business effectively in order to raise finance.

I guess the trick is to know when to wear the execution hat (and focus on detail) and when to where the scale hat (and know when to think about scale) and not get mixed up between the two.

I’ve loved 37signals for years. I’ve used their products, and blogged about how great their products are. I’ve followed their story as they got funding, from Jeff Bezos no less. And today I was reminded why I really admire them.

37signals has announced that they are undertaking a series of “workplace experiments”. They are doing these experiments to make their workplaces a more fun and engaging place. They are trying to make their workplace – in their words – “one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy”.

So what are they doing? First they’ve introduced shorter work weeks – 4 day weeks, no work on Friday. Second their funding people’s passions (hobbies, interests, curiosities), the examples they’ve given are cooking lessons, learning to fly, woodworking classes. And third they’re giving discretionary spending accounts, with the simple requisite that people are reasonable with their spending.

If you’re asking what’s so great about that? Who are you Scrooge McDuck?

Seriously though, they’re trying to make their workplace, rewarding, engaging, dynamic, and responsible and in a two way dynamic. They’re responsible to their employees and in return I bet their turnover is minuscule. Plus they’ll get some more pub/press about being really cutting edge in how they run their business. I can’t see other organisations picking up this, it’s too risky, doesn’t show financial returns easily, and… well it’s just too good.

But I do know that if/when I do the “start up thing” I’d like to follow their lead. Hopefully, other companies will too, and when businesses that my generation have started are the norm, maybe this will be the norm too.