Who is Farhan Lalji?

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.

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.

It’s here and it rocks. I heart Flickr a little more today.

More information on the Flickr blog and there’s a video group that has some great content already.
Personally I think this will be different to the other video sites already online (thinking YouTube and Facebook) because the community on Flickr is pretty strong and puts up solid content. People on Flickr are passionate about photos and getting the same people to put up videos will lead to great video content.

Loving Dunstan’s beach close ups for example.

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.

When I was in University the internet was just being discovered. I subscribed to a Yahoo! email account, taught myself html on Geocities and fell in love with the web. I was lucky to have such experiences.When I left University, circa 2000, I came to London at a time when you didn’t need a Computer Science or engineering degree to be a web developer. I got job offers for roles that were bigger then my skills. I got lucky.

Sure there were tough times; I went to work in the public sector when the private sector money was drying out. But I learnt a lot over that period. Mostly, I learnt I was cut out to be a developer.

I went back to school and graduated with a great class, as the current FT rankings will testify. Made some great friends during this time and had some phenomenal experiences.

We sold our flat a couple of months ago, before the sub prime mortgage crisis and now the housing market looks like it’s turning down. Luck was striking again.

Now that I’m at Yahoo! it kind of feels like I’ve come full circle. And with the latest news around the company I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a little nervous about what the future holds. But whatever it holds I’m looking forward to the ride.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say Shukar/shukran somewhere in this, so there it’s been said.

I started this blog as I finished the MBA to document my transition from a graduate to a professional. Professional what? I’m not sure. Right now it’s a marketer working for Yahoo! Allow me to think out loud for a couple of minutes.

Last week I was listening to a great podcast from Stanford University’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series. The particular podcast was on angel investing and had Ron Conway and Mike Maples discussing their experience. Something Mike Maples said really stuck with me, he basically said that we’re lucky enough to have a tremendous education behind us (he was talking about Stanford, but could equally apply to London Business School) so we have no excuse for not doing something your passionate about. I couldn’t agree more.

We had some close friends over for lunch the other day and amongst the great conversation we were discussing our jobs and what we’re doing. Some of us were still trying to figure out what we’re passionate about and some of us know what we’re passionate about and are working in those fields.

Either way, there’s no excuse for not being passionate about what you do. Because if you’re not it’s easy to do something else.

It might seem difficult, but as someone who fell in love with the internet (as sad as it might sound its true) and moved from studying health to doing web development to studying at LBS to working for Yahoo! I have to believe, with passion and commitment, that anything is possible.

A lot of the world doesn’t have that kind of flexibility. Most of the people of the world grow up not being able to make more then a dollar a day. As someone who has access to capital, education, and information I feel blessed and I totally agree with Mick Maples, there is no excuse for not doing what I’m passionate about.

Will I always be this passionate about online? Who knows, I’m not sure. But whatever I decide I’m passionate about I’m lucky enough to know that I have the education and the experience to transition into something else.

Delicious has infiltrated my consciousness. Over the past 24 hours I’ve had about 18 conversations about using delicious. And this morning I discovered I can use delicious better too!

Yesterday Cathy and I had a conversation with the boss man about delicious actually being people powered search in addition to being a good repository for your bookmarks. It was the first time I had thought of delicious as an actual search engine. In my opinion it’s actually better then any old search engine because it only indexes sites and links that people have thought enough of to bookmark. Imagine if the search results only gave you things people actually thought enough of to say this is important enough that I want to come back to this site repeatedly. Goodbye useless results, hello good focused results.

If that wasn’t enough N, our friend HK and I went for dinner last night and N and I were shocked to find that HK wasn’t using delicious. He was keeping multiple browsers open with multiple tabs and inviting his computer to crash on him. And when it inevitably did he would scan all the tabs he had open and put them in his long term memory. N and I spend most of the evening going through the benefits (all your bookmarks, indexed the way you want them, easy to find, independent of the computer and the browser, ability to see what things others found important) and the ease of using it (plug ins and extensions galore) and I think we may have convinced him enough to give it a try. I hope, if not, I will enjoy bugging him about being stuck on web browsing 1.0.

Then this morning I discovered that even I wasn’t using delicious well either! Cathy’s been working on a project and I discovered that I had multiple sites on my delicious that would be a real help to her work. I’ve been discussing ideas and coming up with concepts, but didn’t use my delicious tags to help her out! In the words of H. Simpson, DOH!

If you don’t use delicious you should. The world would be a better place… okay maybe that’s taking it to an extreme, at least you’re browsing and searching would be a better experience.

Full disclosure: Delcious is a Y! company, but I’ve been using it since 2004 or something crazy like that!

One of the interesting things about working for a large multinational organization is that everyone has an opinion about the company. This definitely takes some getting used to.

I knew it was going to be interesting the day after I let people know I was joining Yahoo, this happened to be the same day the MSFT rumors came out. Over the weekend a friend of a friend went off on one about how I should have joined Google rather then Yahoo. And now with the Jerry Wang / Sue Decker / Terry Semel announcement I’m being IM’d, emailed and accosted by friends on facebook for my opinion.

It’s hard not to get annoyed and ticked off at the misinformation and speculation. It’s something I’ve never dealt with - got any tips? Here’s my strategy for now, assess the person/people I’m speaking to, that is their background, there perspective and their information source. And then assess the medium being used (i.e. a face to face conversation has to be dealt with differently then an IM or a facebook message). Finally tell them to shut the hell up. Okay I might need to rethink that last step.

Anyway, I guess it’s something I’m going to have to get used to. Especially as I want to stay at Yahoo for some time – which, for the record, I definitely do.

My name is Farhan. I hit 30 last year, finished my MBA last month and joined Yahoo last week - okay it was 5 weeks ago, what can I say I’m a sucker for patterns.

I used to blog at vox, and while it was a useful blogging tool for someone who was working full time and studying full time - i.e. A chimp could have set it up - the time was right to make a move. So, after a bit of diligence I chose WordPress, picked a pattern, hacked it up a bit, added a couple of widgets and voila, welcome to the life of Farhan, a blog.

To be perfectly honest, my blogging over the past 20 months or so has been pretty weak. I blame it on the stress of doing an executive mba, switching jobs a couple of times and generally being too tired to write anything interesting. Now that I’m done with the mba, at a company I love and a role I’m enjoying things should be different… I hope.

So what am I going to talk about here you ask? Well life in general, life in technology, life in London and other stuff.

My adventures this past weekend are a perfect example of how diverse the topics will be. Friday we went and saw Nitin Sawhney and a bunch of unsigned independent artists put on a great show at the Royal Festival Hall. Rappers, singers, cellists and spoken word artists doing their thing together. Very cool.

Saturday was spent at Borough Market. We’ve recently put our flat on the market and one of the things I’ll miss is the fact that borough market is step counting distance away from us.

Sunday however was a highlight not only of the weekend but possibly the year to date, Yahoo and the beeb organised an open hack day. And as an employee I got the chance to help out. There were great hacks and great people but why go into details when others have done a far better job.

One of the highlights for me was sitting down and chatting with Salim Ismail, another newbie to yahoo. What Salim’s done over the past 10-15 years is pretty incredible, but it’s pretty consistent with the type of people I find myself working with here at Y!

So there you go, first post check. Hopefully you laughed, you cried and you can’t wait to come back. I promise I’ll try not to keep you waiting too long.

Some related stuff:

• more on hackday (plus the Flickr pics - over 4000 pics!)
• while I was writing this, Terry has resigned and Jerry Yang has stepped in as the CEO of the company he helped co-found, my opinion has pretty much been summed up by both Salim and Fred Wilson’s posts.