Who is Farhan Lalji?

The bee (new name for the wife) and I were walking around Hampstead yesterday. We walked into the Body Shop – her choice obviously - and I said “has the body shop changed at all in the last couple of years?” it was obvious that it hadn’t. I started to wonder what if the Body Shop hadn’t been acquired by L’Oreal, would I be saying the same thing? Sure there have been other factors which slowed down innovation, like the death of Anita Roddick, but surely being part of the giant L’Oreal machine has slowed down growth.

This kind of thing is common in the internet industry; every cool company that I’ve liked hasn’t done anything really innovative since being acquired. But I was surprised to see that the same applied to retail.

A lot of entrepreneurs like the idea of pumping and dumping, build something cool, make it valuable, get someone big to pay a pretty penny, sit around while shares vest, and then head off to the next big thing. It’s not just small or medium sized start ups where this happens, a friend who’s in the venture business with whom I was discussing recent events at Y! made the statement

“pretty much all M&A is value destructive for the acquirer. But its great for the target”

I disagree… well sort of. While it’s great financially for the target, I think all M&A sucks for both parties, it handcuffs people, makes it difficult to do anything new and while the companies are busy ironing out the mess left after the transaction the competition pounces. Sad thing is while the entrepreneurs, founders, shareholders and other investors’ pockets get fatter the users/customers/employees suffer.

I hope at some point I’ll dip my toe in the entrepreneurial waters, and if you had asked me a year or so ago how would you feel about the company you built being acquired; I would probably have had a very different answer to today. Then it would have been “show me the money”. Today, it’s more likely to be “show me the plan and how value won’t be destroyed”. Interesting how your perspectives change in a short amount of time.

I deal with a lot of data. I sometimes find it difficult to present data in a way that allows people to really make decisions or draw insights easily. That’s why I was thrilled to come across a great graphic/flash tool from the New York Times that shows how the different demographics voted in Democratic primaries (hat tip to the boys at 37 Signals).

Pretty easy to draw some conclusions from this app. While Blacks hugely supported Obama, Whites support of Hilary was luke warm at best. And it was kind of cool to see as the segment gets younger and more educated the support for Obama grows. The educated future of America chose Obama, which makes me think even if he doesn’t win in the next election; the future looks pretty good for the country.

The simple visualisation from the NYT is a great example of providing data graphically in a way that enables people to make insights easily. Very cool.

Launching quickly in a market you know or eventually in all markets, that is the question? Starbucks is launching free wifi in US branches, partnering with AT&T. No news on when this will happen in other markets yet.

I’m of two minds on this. Part of me is pi**ed off that big US companies almost always seem to launch cool new initiatives or products in the US and then eventually in other markets. Another part of me understands that it’s better to get it out there in a market you know and then establish the presence in other markets.

I just hate significant lags between a US launch and an international launch. Companies that have lags are basically allowing local competitors time to make an imprint on the market with copy cat services until the big US company comes into the market.

In the end no one wins. Not the local market – because they have a poor copy cat, or the big US company, because you end up competing with a local competitor that might not have been there had you launched globally. Guess it depends on how strong a product or service it is your offering. Take the iPhone for example, there was a delay in launching in Canada versus the US, but – as I saw on my trip there last week – a lot of people waited and are now happy costumers. But not every product or service is as kick a** as the iPhone.

Umair’s been spending quite a bit of time talking about good and evil, open and closed, Microsoft and Yahoo, and Facebook and Google. A very basic synopsis would be that open is good, Microsoft, and increasingly Facebook, have bad DNA and this will prevent them from sustaining success in the long run. Whereas Google has being good in it’s DNA and this will enable them to succeed in the long run. It’s a pretty smart analysis and I think its pretty spot on.

However, one company that has kept its doors closed and managed to succeed is Apple. iTunes has to be the most closed bit of software I know. And DRM is just plain evil, very evil. But yet Apple kills in this market and is showing no signs of letting up.

So my theory is that design can trump good and evil in the short term. If you ensure that users have a great experience, and that it’s simple, efficient and effective users and the community in general will overlook the fact that it’s closed, proprietary and evil - how else would you explain DRM? The iPhone is another example of closed and well designed but yet super successful. The fact that Apple was bricking unlocked phones is another great example of evil but well designed.

Is this sustainable? I don’t believe so. I believe if someone comes up with a really useful, easy, super smooth system that has a wide variety of content and is good, open, basically DRM free, then iTunes could go down. And if someone (RIM/Nokia I’m looking at you) comes up with a phone that meets the standards Apple has set for usability for browsing and interacting online on your handheld device and is open as well, well then Apple could go down there too. It’s not easy, because Apple’s set the design bar so high, but it’s not impossible.

One of the reasons I love twitter and SMS messaging is that you have a limit to the number of characters you have to get your message across. So you’re constantly thinking about the most effective way to use the limit to get your message across.

Communication formats without limits makes it more difficult to communicate effectively and efficiently. So I’ve started putting limits on other forms of communication.

Cathy brought the 5 sentence rule to my attention a couple of weeks ago, and I have to admit that it’s changed the way I write emails. I have five sentences in my head the whole time I’m writing so I make sure I don’t go on and on which I’ve been known to do as well.

I’m thinking about what would be the optimum framework for blog posts. I hate posts that could probably be cut in a third and would end up being clearer for it. So I’m trying to stick to 3-4 paragraphs and see if my posts are clearer because of it. We’ll see.

Speed accuracy news and people

I’m not a huge fan of some of the tech blogosphere. I think a lot of times there harsher then they should be, and off base with some of their reporting. I won’t name names but you probably know of who I speak. But a lot of time they’re really accurate. This is true for some more then others of course.

But, the timing of stories is incredible and as close to live as you’re going to get. I’ve gone from reading the trade press and find out what’s going on at a week by week level, to not reading the trade press at all. I read the papers the next day skimming through for new pieces of information because I’ve read the main message on the blogs the day before – as it happened.

So I’m making a trade off, preferring to find out what’s happening when it happens rather then getting the insights and super data checked accuracy that comes with newspapers. And that’s okay by me.

But we don’t always know what it was made for.

Jason Calacanis is an entrepreneur, he’s behind Mahalo.com – a people powered search engine, he’s also a blogger, tweets on twitter and is pretty well connected. Anyhoo, I recently came across a tweet from Jason leading to a page on Flickr where Jason had posted a potential redesign of the Mahalo site and asked users for comments. In under 5 minutes he had about 20 comments - and by the time I hit publish on this post he had nearly 200 comments.

Flickr wasn’t created to be a user feedback on design tool, but a funny thing happens when you allow the community to use a site in any way they want, good things can happen.

If you build it they will come was a great line, personally I like if you build it people will find a way to use it for the internet. Think that’s what’s happening with sites like Twitter and other web start ups, their launching something without a business model not sure how they’ll monetise it but getting people to use it in whichever way suits them. Hoping that they’ll have an “aha moment”, will this work? Not sure, but it’s fun to watch.

Great post from the boys over at SvN about planning. They’re talking mostly about software, but I think it totally applies to business as well.

Why do we spend so much time planning? Does preparation really help anything? Business plans, marketing plans, blah blah blah. Thing with plans is no matter how much you plan you don’t know what you don’t know. This is especially true when it comes to all things online.

According to RWW 5 years ago Ad Sense wasn’t around, web 2.0 hadn’t been invented, the top blog was Slashdot. By my recollection, 5 years ago Flickr was independent, big web companies were IPO-ing, and not having a mobile phone wasn’t unheard of. That’s all changed. So what about all those business plans that weren’t written 5 years ago?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think planning is all bad, I think you need to set some milestones and a general direction. But planning every detail so you don’t change or allow for flexibility as times change is just silly. When the world is changing at the rate it’s changing at you need to be able to change with it.

A plan might look great today, but tomorrow something might change the circumstances around the plan and it will look like crap. People need to plan less and do more.

I blog on my own site and - with Facebook’s notes import feature - my notes get reprinted on Facebook. This works well in some ways as (assumption) most of the people who read me on Facebook don’t use RSS so when they login to Facebook they see that I’ve written a new note. For people who read the blog through RSS or visiting the blog directly they (assumption) prefer using readers and commenting directly on the post. The problem is this separates the conversation and instead of comments being shared and great conversation taking place there are comments in two places and the conversation is in parts and not as great as I think it could be.

Examples, my play and work posts got comments on both Facebook and on my blog and my government posts got a ton of comments on my Facebook page and I know that people who read my blog would have added to this conversation.

So that’s the dilemma, what’s the solution? Some visitors on the blog aren’t Facebook friends, don’t think there’s a way to keep the Facebook posts open to people who aren’t contacts, is there? Should I just ask people to comment only on the blog? Facebook readers click on where it says “View original post”. I don’t think I can block comments on Facebook and force folks to comment on my blog, can I?

Any tips? Suggestions?

During my last job, at a design agency in London, we had a pool table. At 530 everyday, almost like clockwork, 2-4 of us would go and shoot some stick. It was a great semi release, we would end up talking about projects or developments in the world of technology more often then not. When we moved offices and ditched the pool table a large part of me felt that was a mistake, but I couldn’t articulate why.

At Yahoo! we have pool, foosball and ping pong tables and though I rarely get the chance to play these days it’s good to know they’re there. I’ve had some good conversations about life, work, philosophy and politics around these tables. One of the best times I’ve had at Yahoo! has been when we went out to play golf in the middle of Soho, not only was the golf fun but in winning the closest to the pin competition I’ve been inspired to play more golf. There was also some great work-related conversation that evening in a relaxed non-traditional environment.

And then I read about the Google Games (hat tip: Brad Feld) where students from MIT and Harvard came in and played various physical, mental and just plain fun games. Great recruitment technique if you ask me.

Last week I came across an article in the London Business School Business Strategy Review regarding the role of play at work. It’s weird but I’ve always felt that having a playful outlet was important to being able to work effectively. And this article makes that case.

If/When I start my own company I think play will play an important part in recruitment, engagement and strategy. If for no other reason then the fact that its fun and we spend way too much time at work not to have fun there.