Category Archives: Technology

Hey Google Wallet, Square and PayPal – Mobile Payments Should Be This Easy

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NFC is not required.

There’s no app to download.

No special device needed to make a purchase.

Apple’s iOS and Android may be popular operating systems, but they aren’t needed to use Seconds. Seconds merges transactions into one of the most popular technologies in the world, SMS messaging.  More than 234 million consumers holding mobile devices in the U.S. can use our payment system today because they can text.  Step back a second and think about that.  Why are barriers in the way of an everyday activity like payments?  There should be no barrier to usage, no device requirements or specific apps to download.  Isn’t that how mobile payments should be –  simple, quick, easy and available to anyone?

Why is that so important you might ask?  The diffusion and resulting adoption of a new technology is at the mercy of its availability to consumers.  Why did email spread so quickly?  Simply because people only needed a computer and an internet connection.  The same goes with credit cards, people don’t need a special wallet to carry a credit card, they just need it in hand to correctly communicate with the terminal and make a payment.  If mobile payments are to be available to all we must start at the lowest common denominator.  Today’s common denominator is the device – not a specific model or operating system – but the general mobile device itself, which at last count was almost 6 billion worldwide.  That’s a big market.  And the first to grab consumer mindshare will be one of the big winners.

Once an account is set up, which connects Seconds to your mobile device, all you need to do in order to pay for something is type the keyword and you are automatically charged. Or if you have communicated purchase intent with a merchant, they simply hit one button and a confirmation text is sent to your phone.  Interestingly, this makes a consumer’s mobile number their new payment credential and opens up many new avenues for quick mobile transactions.

The video below shows how one of our pilot customers is using Seconds to distribute their food products around Seattle and beyond.  The hungry person approaches the fridge, texts the word ‘wrap’, a payment confirmation is automatically sent back a few seconds later and they grab the wrap and go on their way.  That’s the future folks…  it’s so much a part of the future Walmart, Target and other large retailers are fussin‘ to build a custom mobile payment experience of their own.

Even better, Seconds allows merchants to program their mobile payments system to create any number of keywords with prices attached so their customers can text and pay with certain words sent to the merchants’ Seconds number.  We have already sat around and wondered what happens when Siri gets involved?

Seconds sits at the convergence of communications and transactions, two activities going through tremendous innovation and both which are germane to commerce.  It’s a perfect marriage and a perfect time to merge the two.  Quite frankly, you really don’t want one without the other since more communications leads to more transactions and vice versa. It’s an absolute virtuous cycle for any merchant.

Also realize Seconds dissociates proximity from transaction, meaning I don’t have to be standing in front of a barista or wave my phone on something to make a purchase, the obvious limitation to NFC payments. This frees up the mobile device to become the new payment terminal, a terminal that resides in the consumer’s hand rather than sitting on the merchants counter.

Mobile transactions will explode once the experience is so quick and simple it only takes Seconds to complete.

Welcome to Seconds.

http://youtu.be/wKQ4cQ8GgEM

Wow! Seconds Growing At More Than 150% Month Over Month

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One thing you learn when starting a company is how difficult it actually is getting things off the ground.  Inertia is your worst enemy.  An object (or technology) at rest will stay at rest.  Your goal is to muster enough energy and usage to launch the rocket into orbit so you can get to the other side of inertia, where an object in motion stays in motion – that is until something gets in it’s way.

The rocket ship has launched and Seconds is on a tear.  Here are some graphs and statistics for the first two months of 2012 and as you can see, things are starting to take off.   The first image is a screenshot of our internal stats page, measuring Jan – Feb.  As you can see, usage , messaging and transactions are all on an upward trajectory.  Something to note here is the fact that all of this usage and growth is 100% organic, meaning we have spent nothing for customer acquisition.  Imagine if we put fuel on the fire?

Hey investors, you want traction?  Here you go…

Next, here is one of my favorite slides from a recent pitch deck.  It sums up our traction, month to month growth as well as response from early customers and partners.  Our Pay-By-Text mobile transactions grew more than 150% from January to February and as of March 2nd, are showing no signs of slowing down!  You can read more about the mobile transactions here, but suffice it to say we are onto something.  Don’t just take it from me – based on our innovative concept we are currently in talks with a very major credit card company to roll out something quite exciting later this year.

Build Your Boat Now Before The Mobile Tsunami Washes You Away

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The wave is coming. Like a tsunami that starts miles off shore, unnoticeable to the human eye in the middle of the ocean but gradually builds up speed and power as it gets closer to land, a mobile tidal wave is most definitely building. And it’s forming right in front of our very eyes.

You may have noticed people aren’t looking up very much anymore. No, when you see a person nowadays they are most likely looking down at their hand. Next time you are on public transportation, in a restaurant, at the mall or any other pubic (or private) place, take your eyes off your device and just watch people. It will blow you away how often people look at their mobile devices.

So as I was doing some recent market research I came across quite possibly the most staggering collection of mobile usage and commerce statistics in the world. It’s well worth your review if you want to know where the world is going. Since it takes quite a while to swim through I have pulled out some of the most impressive stats and wrapped them into a conversation about the mobile web. Spoiler alert: You’re gonna get wet!

6 Billion Mobile Devices

There are approximately 5.9 billion mobile subscribers, which is roughly 87 percent of the world population. Mobile subscriptions outnumber fixed lines 5-to-1. Also, there are now 1.2 billion mobile Web users worldwide, based on the latest stats for active mobile-broadband subscriptions. Did you notice the ratio difference between mobile subscribers and mobile web users? It is easy to see why the experts predict that mobile Web usage will overtake PC-based Web usage very soon and why it would be a good idea to have a real mobile strategy.

Many of those mobile Web users are mobile-only, meaning they do not, or very rarely use a desktop, laptop or tablet to access the Web. Even in the US 25 percent of mobile Web users are mobile-only. In mature markets, the mobile Web will be a leading technology for business to consumer (B2C) mobile applications and should be part of every organization’s business strategy. If you are a merchant or a local business you need to pay attention and build that dang boat, a figurative term for your mobile site and interactive mobile experience utilizing an app, mobile browser or text.

8 Trillion Text Messages

Speaking of text messaging. Over 8 trillion text messages were sent in 2011, overtaking voice minutes and making it the worlds most popular mobile communication medium. We have yet to see the biggest impact SMS and messaging will have on our society. A2P, application to person SMS, is expected to overtake person to person SMS in 2016. A2P messaging includes messages between applications and customers in financial services, advertising, marketing, business administration, ticketing, television voting, and other automated systems. This nascent market should not be overlooked – by 2016 A2P messaging is estimated being worth more than $70 billion.

Global expenditure on mobile advertising was approximately $3.6 billion in 2009, and is estimated to grow to $38 billion in 2015 and the worldwide mobile messaging market will reach $334.7 billion by 2015. For any businesses this is significant or a number of reasons, namely to identify the most cost effective platforms to utilize in their mobile commerce.  People respond differently to different types of mobile marketing, proven by studies in the UK and France, where they found opt-in SMS gets the best results, and in Germany mobile Web ads got the best results.  It seems time sensitive special offers or discounts (especially mobile coupons) were most likely to lead to a purchase.

$1 Trillion of Mobile Payments

Most significant will be the transformation in how we use our mobile devices in everyday commerce. Mobile ad spend worldwide is predicted to sky rocket to $20.6 billion in 2015, driven by search ads and local ads. A logical evolution for mobile search is towards mobile transactions. Once the connection has been established through the mobile device, brands can build up much more detailed profiles of users compared to online and plan follow-up campaigns accordingly. In 2009, there were 81.3 million people worldwide using their mobile device to make payments and it is estimated by the end of 2014, this is forecasted to rise to nearly 490 million. Mobile transactions will drastically change our society. The market for paying by mobile device could be well over $1 trillion by 2015.  Simply put, that is HUGE!

Now we know a flood is coming so let’s go back to thinking about your boat. If you were building an actual boat, would it be smart to build only to float in salt water? Probably not. Then why are we building systems and business only for specific devices and operating systems? If you follow that logic you will definitely drown when the tidal wave hits since 95 percent of the worldwide mobile device market is not an Apple.  It would be best to build your boat – a mobile-optimized web experience – looking beyond a single device to maximize reach.  Do it and you will surely rise with the tide.

@jnickhughes

Anyone Promoting NFC Is Fighting The Right Battle With The Wrong Weapon

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Using NFC (Near Field Communication) to pay for something is not much different than swiping your credit card on a terminal.

Anyone fighting the battle to improve payments will agree it’s an all-out war against the decades old practice of using plastic cards and a centuries old tradition of paper and coins.  These payment methods are so ingrained in our everyday life we hold on to our wallets like our lives depend on it.  So how are we going to transition into the cashless society everyone keeps talking about?

Enter NFC, or Near Field Communication, which can be loosely described  as chips built into our mobile devices that transfer information to another device when  placed at a specific distance from a reader.  Some think this is the future of mobile payments, and some don’t.  I think ReadWriteWeb’s Dan Rowinski says it best:

 From a technological perspective, near field communications (NFC) is one of the most powerful and prominent innovations to come about in the last several years. But from a functional, real world standpoint, NFC is a technology without a clear-cut purpose. What problems does it actually solve? When it comes payments, how much different is a tap with your smartphone than a swipe of your debit card? What about the ability to open doors or share content with your friends? There are solutions already available on mobile devices for many of these “problems.” So, what is the real future for NFC?

Even before I put my gear on, saddled up my horse and rode it directly in the middle of the mobile payments battlefield I questioned NFC as the next big thing in payments.  Why?  Because using NFC to pay for something is not much different than swiping your credit card on a terminal.  Although there is more to the technology, like the ability to include services and software in the payment experience, I believe it is not fundamentally going to change the payment industry for a number of reasons.

Problem 1: Hardware Requirement In Phones

Your ability to swipe your phone and pay for something (via NFC) is dependent first and foremost on you having an NFC enabled device.  This is determined by an NFC chip placed inside your mobile phone when it was assembled.   The majority of phones on the planet carried by most people are not NFC enabled.  Although millions of phones will be shipped this year with an NFC chip inside, it will pale in comparison to the number of phones currently being used that lack the technology.  The mobile device you hold in your hand should not qualify you to purchase a product.

Just as SMS texting technology has nothing to do with your specific device, your ability to pay via your mobile device should not rest on the fact that you are “NFC” enabled.  In fact, what if SMS technology was not just for messaging between friends and family but actually carried a transaction between two parties – be it friends or customers/merchants?  More than 8 trillion text messages were sent around the world last year and those were pretty much all words between people.  It will be interesting to see how a communications technology that is already prevalent and widely used around the world can be leveraged for quick payments.  It’s would be adopted a lot quicker than a technology that will take at least three to five years to get traction and requires a big investment in hardware by merchants.

Problem 2: Hardware Requirement For Merchants

The second biggest requirement for an NFC transaction to work is the merchant must have an NFC enabled terminal so you can swipe your phone.  Expecting consumers to purchase new mobile phone hardware every 2 or 3 years is not too much to ask, but thinking merchants are going to upgrade their point of sale terminals to enable NFC mobile payments is outrageous.  Being on the front lines of servicing local merchants, I personally know these proprietors will do almost anything to not have to spend money upgrading their payment terminals.

And since technology is moving so fast these days the hardware that comes out this year will be ancient in a few short years.  So what are businesses supposed to do then?  Not accept mobile transactions anymore?  Requiring local business owners to upgrade their terminals every couple of years is a losing proposition.

Like anything, the answer is not more hardware but better software.  That is why even though PayPal is experimenting with NFC in some capacity moving forward, the company ultimately believes that the technology is a step backward when it comes to point-of-sale transactions.  Web enabled software connecting customers to merchants for communication and transaction is what will win the battle for mobile payments.  The solution that eventually goes deep into “main street America” will not depend on any new hardware that needs to be replaced every few years, but will leverage existing technologies and networks already in place and which are cost effective to both merchants and consumers.

Problem 3: Your Physical Presence is  STILL Required

Something I am not sure most have thought about when considering the payment experience is the concept of presence.  Many NFC supporters will talk about the security of NFC, meaning it’s safer because you have to be there and swipe to make transaction, similar to how most credit cards work today.  Although that is true, unfortunately this does not make the payments industry any more efficient than it already is.  Even when using a “new” technology like NFC, physical presence is still a requirement.  The point of a new transaction experience is to replace a wallet full of cards, not create new cards or re-create the card present experience.

What happens if I want to pay for something like tickets to an event, a dinner I want delivered to my house, or my rent due every month for my apartment?  Based on the requirements of Google Wallet and NFC, I have to do what I have done for the last 20 years and actually be present to use the payment technology, or call and read them my credit card numbers.

Even Erick Schonfeld agrees: “Waving a card (or phone, for that matter) over a reader is not a huge improvement in ease or convenience to simply swiping a credit card. Credit cards work. More importantly, people know how they work. They are not going to stop swiping and start waving without some incentive to do so.”

At Seconds, we believe the future of payments will be found in your ability to make payments regardless of your physical presence.  That is why we are very excited about our Pay by Text technology, we see a whole new world of payments when you disassociate proximity from transaction.

Whatever happens in war for mobile payments one thing is for sure, the battlefield will see many warriors and the ultimate winner will own a very large territory.

@jnickhughes

Like It Or Not, Here’s How Your Startup Proves Evolution (Controversial)

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It’s crazy to think a simple idea of starting a company can prove the controversial concept of evolution.  Yet, like it or not here’s how it does.

Before I go in depth on the idea of evolution in the business world, my disclaimer:

This may be controversial so let’s put aside our beliefs and perspectives on faith or religion and speak only on the concept of evolution, as in the Darwin perspective as we know it.  Ya know, natural selection and all associated phenomena.  I am not an expert on the subject and will not pretend to be here.  I only want to bring  upthe concept of evolution into the context of entrepreneurship and building successful companies.  

An interesting observation is how most world changing technologies or ideas actually start as thoughts and go through a transformation into ideas, onto sketches on napkins, to prototypes, to working models, and onto businesses.  Although almost too obvious to note, all things must start with a thought.  A spark of genius.  An idea.

*ding*

That idea, brilliant or stupid, is just the beginning of a (un)predictable path towards life and eventual death.  If in the right place at the right time, and the right decisions are made to take advantage of opportunities, the idea will transform into something more visceral and experience an extended life.  If not, most likely the idea will die a quick death into obscurity.

This is why you hear “ideas are everywhere” and “execution is everything”.  I can just hear Darwin whisper similar words in the same vein.  In his context, execution would have referred to “the strong” or “genetically enhanced”.  Not to get sexual, but if a highly attractive and sexually active member of a species “executed” properly, they would have passed on their genes to influence the gene pool and the evolution of their species.

Your startup must mirror the same as the highly attractive and sexually active member to survive.  What do I mean?  You need to be attractive to customers, users, investors, media and potential employees to succeed.  If not, you will never be discovered and will eventually die.  Attractiveness can come in many forms but the most obvious one is your unique idea.  Does it make sense?  Is it something most people would be attracted to and want to use?  Does it elicit emotions of excitement or intrigue?  Is it unique enough to not be lost in the clutter of all the other same “species”.

Also required to be attractive is the core members of the founding team.  Is there expertise on the market subject?  Are there proven individuals who get results, or more referred to as JFDI?  Are they fun to be around?  Do they attract people to them or do they drive others away?  This is huge, since any successful startup finds ways to attract employees, investors, users and media attention.

That is why you hear investors say “we invest in people, not ideas.”

Your start up must aggressively mate as well.  Wha??  Yes, I said your company must be promiscuous and interact with other companies if it wants to be successful.  This is how you integrate within the larger framework of the ecosystem and spread your gene pool for future generations.  Facebook is the best example of this with their open graph and the like buttons found all over millions of websites.  Their tentacles are everywhere and indeed they have solidified their gene pool in our world for decades to come.  Do other companies find your startup attractive enough to mate?

How do I know all this and why the heck am I thinking about evolution and your startup having sex with another startup?

We once were the ugly duckling but quickly evolved into a better suited mammal geared to mate with the royalty of the land.  My company Seconds, was originally named Order SM and intended to be a mobile ordering startup for the food industry.  (All S & M jokes aside, the name was supposed to be meant for SMS ordering).   It became clear the name and the basic concept needed to evolve if we were going to continue.  Yet this was not our intention initially, it naturally happened as others started to interact on the platform and suggest use cases outside of our original plan.

Last fall we released out beta product and our initial customers provided enough feedback to realize we were onto something A LOT BIGGER than we originally planned.  We realized ordering was a form of communication – just one aspect of the iteration between merchant and customer.  Questions were another part of the relationship.  Requests and thank you follow ups from merchants were also a part of natural communications.  And the biggie – transactions – are at the very core of the relationship between customers and merchants.

It was at this point we decided to change the name and the fundamental value proposition.  Seconds – quick communications and mobile commerce.  Helping merchants and customers more easily interact and transact.  We are providing consumers a unique mobile commerce identity that will span the entire globe.  And we are giving merchants the ability to identify those most important to their business.

We realized the world was mutating right before our eyes, but one “species” was going to be left behind unless we did something about it.  More than 8 trillion text messages were sent around the world last year, yet none to local businesses or merchants.  It’s crazy to think we can text our friends and family with the widely popular communication medium, yet you or I cannot communicate via text with our favorite local coffee shop or the 5 star resort we intend to visit next week.  We are changing that, and  have quickly found ourselves in talks with everything from emerging startups to multinational, multibillion companies.

Just as Darwin found “one species does change into another” as he looked at Galápagos mockingbirds from different islands, startups must go through phases of transformation if they are to succeed.

The idea that your initial idea – in it’s most basic genetic form – will be required to mutate into a different species for survival has to be understood by founders and investors.  This is more generally called the Pivot, and Lean Startup proponents such as Eric Ries have graciously helped our community unearth one of the most powerful phenomenons to hit the business culture to date.

I think that is enough talk on companies having sex for today.

@jnickhughes

How Facebook Will Conquer Your Real World Identity

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When Facebook released their S-1 announcing their intent to go public, Mark Zuckerberg left no doubt in anyone’s mind they have taken over our digital world.  According to Hitwise, Facebook now accounts for 1 in every 5 pageviews on the web (in the U.S.). It’s crazy to think Facebook wasn’t visionary in the revolutionary sense of the word, they just recognized the world needed a real directory of people, not merely another site to attract users. And indeed, they nailed it. The goal of making its social graph portable and fundamental to the fabric of the Web – and your virtual identity – has certainly been realized.

But can Facebook extend its reach outside the wired world and into your real world? Actually, I don’t think that’s the right question to ask. Maybe the better question is “HOW will Facebook extend its reach into your real world?”

It would seem they are on a tear and the facts are staggering. Hitwise found Facebook.com is now seeing one out of every eleven of their visits coming from the U.S., and 1/5 of all pageviews online in the U.S. takes place on Facebook.com. Their monthly actives grew 21% over the past four months. They are now seeing about 850 million users each month, with half accessing on their mobile device. In 2011, they earned almost $4 billion in revenue and of that, exactly $1 billion was profit. In the S-1 filing, Zuckerberg even goes to the lengths of declaring their intent to fundamentally rewire the way the world works, from interpersonal interactions to commerce to even government.

Facebook’s current revenue is driven mostly by advertising, and analysts are postulating about what exactly led Facebook to IPO.  Maybe it’s a desire to steer where advertising is going, to hopefully make it more personal and relevant for consumers.  But make no mistake, Facebook is already one of the most valuable companies on the planet because of the information they gather.   Age, gender, current city, hometown, employers, education, friends, interests, and now in-app activity and commerce habits are all reasons Facebook is worth an estimated $100 billion.

Yet advertising might not always be their bread and butter since it can only take you so far (just look at what other businesses Google is trying to create) and diversification is the name of the game if you want to protect your longterm business.

This brings us to a natural progression in the digital ecosystem – from advertising to payments. Within the S-1 they revealed their virtual Payments business is already bringing in $557 million in revenue per year. From the filing, Facebook writes that “we may seek to extend the use of Payments to other types of apps in the future.” Although not specific about these other apps, one could think they could include anything that somehow integrates with Facebook.

So it would seem Facebook is on pace to take over the world….. except one big side note, the mobile device. Analysts and the media are already pointing out Facebook has discovered their Kryptonite, which would be the fact that even though almost half of all their users are accessing Facebook from their mobile device, they are generating almost zero revenue from mobile usage.

Facebook risks being left behind as the world turns more of their attention to their mobile devices. Also found in the S-1, Facebook goes to great lengths to admit they have no current way to monetize mobile “We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products. Accordingly, if users continue to increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers…our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected.”

So while Facebook sees mobile as critical to its future growth, the growing number of people accessing the social network via mobile devices (again, 450 million!) could negatively impact its advertising revenue unless it is able to begin monetizing its mobile usage.

This should not be taken lightly, as anyone in the industry knows mobile is growing at a rapid pace and it’s only going to accelerate. Techcrunch cofounder and guest author Keith Teare, who is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Labs and CEO of newly funded just.me, eloquently puts it:

The reason this risk factor jumps out of the page – for me – is that this trend to growing mobile use is inevitable. What is more, it will be both rapid and enormous. How do we know this? Well, human beings are flocking to mobile platforms in droves. This is happening to such an extent that Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker went on the record almost 1 year ago to say that we are now in the 5th major technology cycle of the past half century (mainframe; mini-computer; desktop; internet and now mobile) and that mobile traffic will “grow 26 times over the next 5 years”

Mobile is The Final Frontier to Our Real Life Identity

It has been determined the most valuable network in the digital world is all your personal connections, collected and put together to form the social graph.  Expansive and data rich, this network connects you and me in a way we never would have been able to do before Facebook hit our screens.

But offline, this is not the case since transactions are the fullest expression of commercial interaction. Offline, the most valuable network is comprised of all the loose connections of merchant/customer relationships around the world, all together representing the GDP.  Broken down to each individual, possibly named the commercial graph, one can start to see patterns and degrees of separation forming.

The mobile device is the most direct and personal connection between our digital world to our physical world. We carry them with us all the time and feel naked if we leave them at home. Their use history is a picture perfect snapshot of who we are, made complete with our media and content preferences in addition to our personal calling and messaging history. Your cell phone contact history is, quite frankly, your true and actual real world social network. The location information (what is seen and not seen by the public) draws a direct path of your everyday footsteps. Like it or not, your mobile device is the crystal ball into your existence – a pure blend of your virtual and physical self.

Yet, Facebook has not figured out how to crack that crystal ball. Yes you can access Facebook proper via your mobile device… but it is still within their digital walls. I am curious as to when Facebook’s tenticals will reach outside those walls and into our physical world. And more interestingly, if not Facebook… then who else will it be?

We Express Relationships With Businesses Via Transactions

In the physical world, the truest expression of our commercial relationship with a businesses is through transaction.  If I like a product, I don’t push a button on the shelf right by where its sitting, I buy it.  If I am attracted to a city and want to stay at a nice hotel, I book the room.  Wouldn’t it be great to directly connect with merchants we care about in our life to make those interactions and transactions much easier?  Wouldn’t it be great if it operated similar to what we have become accustomed to in out digital social worlds?  Unfortunately, we cannot indicate a preferred long term relationship with a merchant, both interactional and transactional, driven through our mobile devices (Not yet that is).

With more than 8 trillion text messages sent last year around the world, and the U.S. alone seeing more than a fourth of those messages, messaging is the most predominant use for our mobile device. Research suggests messaging is still growing and arguably this won’t change for the foreseeable future. What if texting wasn’t just meant for communication, but also designed for transaction? It has been estimated that worldwide mobile payments (m-payments) will be over US$1 trillion by 2015. That is one BIG market if I have ever seen one.  And a market any serious digital media company should be focused on.

So if mobile is only going to be more important as time goes on, if our real world identities are tied to our mobile device and if transactions are the most valuable market in the world, it would make sense the next war for supremacy lies right where those three battlefields intersect.

Anyone want to suggest what Facebook has in store in the coming years to deliver returns for their shareholders? If their goal really is to fundamentally rewire the way the world works, from interpersonal interactions to commerce to even government, they need to do more than just show us ads in our news feed.

The advantages to going public at $100 billion is everyone who was a shareholder “before” the IPO will make a nice return on their investments – both time and money. The downfall of going public valued at $100 billion is that for anyone who is a shareholder “after” the IPO is going to need to see that valuation increase drastically to achieve a positive return. How is Facebook going to do that? The multi-trillion dollar worldwide market of physical world payments is probably Facebook’s best bet at making those returns come true.

Your virtual identity is arguably still up for grabs but at this point the front runner is Facebook with almost 1 billion users worldwide. The question is who will own your real world identity?

Even more interesting is wondering if we can fight for our real world identity or will we succumb to the greatest virtual social network on earth overtaking our physical world as well?

The Future Of Mobile Payments: Text A Word And Pay For Something

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Imagine a world where by simply texting a word like “Sandwich” will result in a quick and seamless transaction so you could  go about your day.  Think about how much easier our lives would be if we didn’t have to wait in line, handle cash or be turned away from food or beverage if we don’t have our wallets in hand.

What if texting wasn’t just meant for communication, but also designed for transaction?

Today, most people take more precautions about carrying their mobile devices than carrying their wallets or purses.

The new question is: if your house is on fire what do you grab, your wallet or your phone?

I bet the answer is an overwhelming “phone”, since we do almost everything with our mobile devices and very soon we won’t be needing a wallet.

Our vision at Seconds is to make it easier for merchants and customers to interact and transact.  This is no more apparent than when looking at our latest innovations on the mobile payment front: Pay by Text.

Here’s how it works.

Once a mobile user sets up a Seconds account and attaches a payment card, they now can simply pay for the desired product with a one word text to the merchant’s Seconds number, in this case it would be the word “Sandwich”.  The resulting text a few seconds later will inform the user they indeed have been successfully charged X amount.  Done.

Important Note: This is not carrier billing, where you place the transaction onto your cell phone bill.  Seconds is completely separate from the carrier and a stand alone mobile payment system.

We are currently one month into a pilot program with a customer testing the functionality and perfecting the process.   Each week we are seeing more and more mobile transactions through Pay by Text, and if things keep going the way they are now this could become the default payment method outside simple food offerings.

Roll with me for a moment.  Imagine going to a movie and rather than waiting in line for the teller to give you a ticket you just simply text “Mission Impossible 4” to the box office and the next thing you know you have paid for the movie and are sent the secret code to enter via text.

Or how about the next time to your favorite band is in town…. do we really have to deal with the whole Ticketmaster ordeal?  Why can’t I send a text to the concert organizer with a simple “Said Band Name” and pay for the price of admission.

Okay, here’s a great one…. how about anything to do with hospitality?  Already, when you check in to a hotel they ask for your contact information, namely a cell phone number.  By running on the Seconds platform the can now open a quick and easy channel for you to text and pay for room service, any and all products… not to mention your room.  Or what about on a Vegas Casino floor….

So, what about NFC?

The problem with NFC technology is you actually have to be in physical proximity for the transaction to work.  The whole point of “Near Field Communication” is touching or swiping your device on a reader which will result in a transaction.  But what happens if I want to pay for something when I am not actually at the specific location or can’t get within a few inches of the reader?  What if it’s ecommerce, which will become more prevalent as time goes on?  Although it might have its place, it looks as if NFC  underwhelms and under-delivers.

That is why we are very excited about our Pay by Text technology, we see a whole new world of payments when you disassociate proximity from transaction.  It’s going well right now and the future is looking very bright for Seconds.

@jnickhughes

10 Simple Steps To Making A Kick Ass Explanation Video For Free!

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Since Seconds is currently self funded, we have a pretty tight budget when it comes to PR and media exposure. But thankfully we have a “make your own for free… and pretty soon others will come around to make it for you later” mentality.

So when it came time to get a basic explanation video up on our site, we decided to do it ourselves rather spending money on a contracted specialist or video generating sites like broadcast2world.com.

Problem was, we really didn’t know where to start. That is where the creativity of Seconds team member Brent Crocker came in. He used Keynote to animate  and produce it, and while not the greatest App to animate a video with it got the job done. Basic image overlaying works great!

Judge for yourself, the video is at the end of the post. Here’s how he did it!

First get a solid script:

1: Determine what points do you want to make and write them down.

2: Think of a way to explain those points to your audience in a concise way.

3: have someone else on your team read through it, ask people if they understand it! This should be at least the start of your script…

Then Make the recording

5. I find that almost every major change to the script happened while I was making recordings… its something about hearing yourself in the recording.

note : I actually use the mic in the Apple headphones to do all my recording, so don’t make the excuse that you don’t have the right equipment! Record short sections of the script and pieced them together, its better to have short recordings to play with!

Determine what animation or imagery will go with the script:

6: Now is when you should be making the visual aspect of you film, after you know what you’re trying to say and how long it takes to say it!

7. With little time you should be able to make some kind of scene with an image editor, I used PixelMator, but anything that can create a clear background will work. Basically, if you can draw it, you can make it this way…

note: Try and figure out what best tells your audience what you’re saying with an image or animation.

Create some simple animations

8. For most scenes you will need a background and something to orient you (like a desk, building, or I even used a couch), but don’t make the scene too busy. Overlay your orienting image over some kind of basic background, black, white, textured, clouds… it up to you.

9. To create an image, grab a texture image like paper, cloth, or rock in the color you want (you can also adjust the color in the image editor). Then cut it to the shape you want. Make sure the image has a transparent background so you can overlay it on other images.

note: you can choose to make it look slightly 3D, but if you want to get through it quickly keeping to 2D animations works the best.

10. Most animations can be done in a program like Keynote/PowerPoint, along with scene changes. Moving images onto the screen and resizing as they come in to give the idea its getting closer. This gives your video some great movement so you can bring to focus the points you are trying to make. You don’t need to make fancy animations to get your point across, just use the animations to move through your points.

note:  focus on creating images that look good, but aren’t too hard to make.  This whole process should take you a week at the most.

Set the recording over your video and get the timing tuned in and you’re ready to post!

One Big Problem: The Worlds #1 Search Engine Is Not The Worlds #1 Social Network

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Google just made a big, bold move and integrated Google+ profiles into their search results.  Yesterday, Google launches Personal Results,Profiles in Search, and People and Pages, new features of its core search product that mark the real beginning of Google’s social search era.

It looks something like this:

The big problem with this is that Google, the worlds best place to search and find information, is assuming my Google+ profile is the most relevant social profile about me and so it should be surfaced first.  Well, I will tell you this:  It’s not.   I rarely (if ever) update Google+ with links, updates and information.   LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are better representations of me and my interests.

Sorry Google.  You are not my default social identity.

When Google+ launched months ago there was a strong reaction around the fact that we don’t need another social profile to keep updated.  There are already too many and this fact still remains true today.  Interestingly, I have seen less Google+ requests lately than I did last fall.

I bet this is the same for millions of other people.  I bet more people keep Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn updated and informed than their Google+ profile.

Am I correct?

@jnickhughes

Here’s Google’s Homepage 1999 vs. 2012. Can You Tell The Difference?

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Today’s design lesson:  Don’t change what’s working.  Here are two screenshots of Google’s homepage; one from May 1999 and one from January 2012.  See much difference?

1999

2012

May 1999 was almost 13 years ago!  The web has changed dramatically since then, yet Google’s search experience hasn’t.  This is a huge lesson for anyone looking to get traction.  One of the most difficult aspects of brining a product to market is user education – meaning after they hear about your product how easily do they start using it.  It’s important because when a user knows how to use a product or service they will tell others about it.

If they can’t use it, they won’t tell anyone.  It’s that simple.

Google has done many thing correctly, but arguably the best was to design their user interface so anyone could use it.  I bet your Grandma knows how to use Google.  I bet your child knows as well.

Can you say that about your web or mobile service?  Are you making it as easy as possible to use your product?

Want Hyper Hockey Stick Growth? You Must First Endure The Blade

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We all love to talk about the companies experiencing massive user growth in a short period of time, generally referred to as hockey stick growth.  Twitter experienced it.  Facebook saw it happen.  Of course Google did as well.  All great companies at one time went from a small unknown startup with no users to a well known company with a massive user base.

A few startups currently experiencing meteoric hockey stick growth are Instagram and Tumblr, incidentally interviewed at a recent Techcrunch Disrupt about managing hockey stick growth.

As fascinating as the hockey stick growth can be, something intriguing happens immediately before the growth period.   Not talked about because it’s not as sexy, Something must be happening before the massive uptick in usage or the uptick wouldn’t happen at all.

So what is it?

I call it the blade.  As you can see, the hockey stick on the right has a flat section (the blade), an angle (the inflection point), and the  rising handle (growth phase).  The blade is the most critical point for any startup because if they get over it alive they move on to the crazy hockey stick growth phase.

Although the Techcrunch Disrupt interview is great and both founders offer a number of insights as to what its like to go through the insane hockey stick growth periods, they don’t really talk about the blade.  My guess is because it’s not as exciting as hockey stick growth.  In fact, it’s tough.  So tough it will make or break a startup.

Blades Require Heat

When referring about a hockey stick, deciding on a blade may be one of the most important decisions a hockey player can make.  The makeup of a hockey stick blade will determine how durable it is and how much stress it can withstand.  A blade — the bottom portion of a hockey stick that may be curved or straight — can help determine the way a player is able to control a hockey puck.  Wood blades today are frequently covered with a composite material, such as Kevlar. Kevlar is a strong, fiber substance that is designed to be used in high stress situations.

Being made of composite, hockey stick blades are malleable and can be shaped to a players advantage.  All it takes is heat.  When a player heats a blade, they can curve it and shape it to their liking.

As if you didn’t know… startups are situations of ridiculously high stress and immense pressure.  It’s almost like you sign up saying ”let’s see how hot it can actually get.”  As part of a startup, you are trying to create the most with the least amount of money, which leads to tremendous financial heat.  You feel heat trying to force the product down people’s throats, working towards product market fit. The pressure is on to prove a specific customer for your product before time runs out.  Lots of late nights, pivots, redesigns and tough conversations will create friction and heat amongst the team.

The blade period – the period of time after launch but before massive usage growth – is one of the most challenging times a team can go through.  Yet, therein lies the test.  The blade test for a startup team involves a number of points: to observe reality that the product is not an overnight hit, listen to feedback, watch available usage metrics, identify what is working and what isn’t, agree on changes to be made, make the changes, reposition the product, polish the messaging and many many others.

The key is to do all this without losing your mind and going crazy.

This situation is extremely difficult for a young team to get through, and that is why most startups don’t make it.  Failed startups don’t ever get to the position of hockey stick growth because they could manage the heat on the blade.   It’s like a right of passage. Show me a (successful) company that did not get over the blade.  The only way to get from launch to hockey stick growth is to get through the heat and over the blade.

Blades Are Short

If done correctly, the blade is just a phase in the life of the company; the shorter, the better.  Flat growth actually shouldn’t last very long if the founders are quick to make needed adjustments to the product, positioning, messaging, and user acquisition strategies.  When great products hit the market, people take notice and users are attracted.

It may be all relative, but some startups only last a few months on the blade, some last years.  Most are somewhere in between.  What does it take to get off the blade?  As I was researching about hockey stick growth, I found this article about the internet and how it finally hit hockey stick growth.  Interesting to note:

The Internet served an important role for a limited number of users, but it had serious barriers to entry. It displayed its messages in monochrome text; no color, no pictures. The Internet had to become pretty and easy. Lessons to be learned include that ease of use, attractive displays, entertainment value, cost-effectiveness, and genuinely new utility are the keys to type-one hockey stick growth.

The goal is to shorten the blade and reach inflection as soon as possible.  Notice how the above statement clearly illustrates the internet grew quickly once it became easy to use, was cost effective, entertaining and useful (of course this is referring to the world wide web.)  These characteristics are  what every startup is searching for in their product.

A lot of the blade comes from not knowing what to change, but a few major points come to mind.  Correct positioning in the market will allow for your product to actually be found by the right audience.  Finding the correct messaging will help the right people/customers to understand your value proposition and start using your product.  As your user base grows, features that help current users share your product will lead to new users.  And the correct distribution model will aide all other aspects and amplify growth.  As these are fairly general, it is for the fact that each action will be unique to your specific offering.

Not to be overlooked, part of putting yourself in the right position for hyper growth is building the right team.  It’s not about hiring, it’s about finding the right talent.  The correct people in the right positions at the right time will only help to shorten the blade and get a startup to hyper growth.

Blades are Remembered

Although any founder or early employee will tell you growth is what they are looking for, the times on the blade is are always the ones the remember the most.   Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO recalls the early days when they almost didn’t make it…. many times over in his book Delivering Happiness.  It’s a great read for any startup founder or early employee, as he re-lives all the challenging (and fun) times Zappos endured.  You can almost feel the sharpness and heat of the blade they got over.

Microsoft co-founder and fellow Seattle resident Paul Allen spends the majority of his book recalling the Early days of Microsoft, the struggles and challenges they faced on the blade.  I was not aware of all the times he and Bill were scared, feeling little hope for the future of their company.  Can you imagine Paul Allen or Bill Gates fretting over $100?  But… we all know the rest of the story.  I’m just glad they went through it at one time in their life as well!

So the blade is a fact of startup life.  The only questions are: how much heat can you take?  What will you do to shorten it so you can get on with growing your company?  And what crazy stories will you be telling when you do make it over the blade?

@jnickhughes

Why Twilio Will Kill AT&T

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Can AT&T remain the 20th century communications powerhouse we came to love (and hate)?  Or will they eventually relinquish their throne to an up-and-comer with a better grip of today’s communication technology needs?

This question can be heard reverberating around the business world like a never-ending echo throughout the grand canyon.  If there is one company that can displace the conglomerate with respects to providing a basic communication platform for the general public, I think it could be Twilio.

Twilio provides infrastructure APIs for businesses to build scalable, reliable voice and text messaging apps.  They provide all this so cost effectively they are seeing massive growth and are a powering a new class of startups, ones that extend their technology to touch almost every part of our society.

To realize my words aren’t mere blasphemy, it’s paramount to grasp the difference between two types of innovation: sustaining and disruptive, these types being best described in The Innovators Dilemma by author Clayton Christensen.  Sustaining innovations are improvements that make the product better, but do not threaten its market.  Disruptive innovation, conversely, threatens to displace a product altogether.  It’s the difference between the electronic typewriter, which improved the typewriter, or the word processor, which supplanted it.

AT&T is the Typewriter.  Twilio looks to be the Word Processor.

The history of AT&T is well documented in the book The Master Switch by Tim Wu.  He describes how the great telephony company, started by Alexander Graham Bell, navigates an incredible path towards dominating the communication wires for most of the 20th century.

What strikes me interesting when I read the great history of AT&T is the repugnance of anything innovative on top of their communications platform.  Was being protective and narrow minded regarding innovation just en vogue thinking of the times?  Or was this perspective so ingrained in the company culture led by visionary (and monopolist) Theodore Vail that it grew stronger as decades past?

They exhibited classic sustaining innovation characteristics.  According to Wu: “AT&T, as an innovator, bore a serious genetic flaw, it could not originate technologies that might, by the remotest possibility, threaten the Bell system.  Disrpuptive technologies, those that might even cast a shadow of uncertainty over the business model, were simply out of the question.”   

More interesting is to wonder if this still the case today?  AT&T is hard at work protecting their lot – cell phones, digital TV, Internet, and the traditional phone service.   So hard at work they are, they fought to acquire close competitor T-Mobile, just another chapter in the centuries long monopolistic story.  Losing the acquisition places AT&T at an interesting crossroads, where they must look in the mirror and choose what type of communications company they should be going forward.   They also seem to be backpedaling on data usage, specifically text messaging, at a time when messaging seems destined to become our main mode of communication.

The real question is are they embracing the new way of business, opening up and encouraging disruptive innovation, from themselves and also from others?  Or are they still about sustaining innovation and stifling anything would that attack their own den?

Twilio, on the other hand  was created to be built upon.  They have innovation running through their veins and pouring out their ears.  Why?  Because they understand the new rules of business – better in the long run to open up, provide basic communication technology to the masses and empower innovative ideas as a platform rather than remain closed and stifle anything that might attack their business model.  They understand technology moves faster than they do so the best position to be in is as a platform.  They understand they will touch more end users by encouraging innovation using their service.  An even better way to think about Twilio’s business model is it’s all about disruptive innovation.

How did Twilio get traction in such a challenging communications ecosystem dominated by the likes of AT&T?  According to  Quora:

One answer points to how developer friendly they are and how much they are ingrained  in the emerging startup culture. “Twilio’s API is beyond awesome. It’s light, it’s fast, and there is no shortage of documentation. They’ve built this from the ground up with developers in mind.  

Also, Danielle Morrill is everywhere, all the time, and doing everything. It seemed like every event I attended she would be there preaching the Twilio gospel. If she wasn’t speaking at the event she was probably in the crowd hacking with other attendees, giving out Twilio account credits, or showering people with Twilio merch (stickers, shirts, etc).  There’s no doubt in my mind that without her contribution to the company we would be looking at an entirely different Twilio today

Even investor Fred Wilson mentioned in early 2010 the unique nature to Twilio and why they have grown so quickly.  “We believe that one way to build a large network of web users is to build something that makes developers’ lives easier. And Twilio does exactly that. It masks all the complexity of telephony into a finite number of API calls that web developers can use to build apps quickly and easily.”  

USV partner Albert Wenger takes it a step farther,  “Twilio has accomplished even more. It has made telephony a bona fide citizen of the Internet, by working on the basis of URLs. This is a profound transformation. Not only does it mean that web development skills can now be applied to telephony. But more importantly, telephony is changing from a closed to an open system in which adding new capabilities now becomes as simple as chaining together web service requests.”

The stance about being developer friendly is exactly why I believe the future is shining brightly for Twilio and particularly cloudy for traditional communications companies like AT&T.

Imagine if AT&T would have realized it’s not enough to just provide people the ability to communicate, but the opportunity to build communication platforms on top of their own platform?  I can only imagine if they were empowering thousands of small and large companies to embrace and extend their technology for the sake of innovation.  Supporting such things as offering $20,000 cash prizes at Hackathons, like this one happening at the upcoming CES, helps get the ball rolling but AT&T’s reluctance to embrace the disruptive technologies and attitudes is classic innovators dilema in action.

New companies building on top of Twilio’s communication functionality have the opportunity to bring communications to the masses for incredibly low cost – if not free.  Seconds, the startup I co-founded last fall is offering messaging functionality to merchants so they can quickly communicate with customers and transact through their mobile device.  Merchants and businesses, the other half of society, have yet to experience the tremendous benefit of messing and quick text communications, and it’s ripe for disruption. I’m not seeing AT&T offering text messaging to local businesses the way the offer it to mobile subscribers.

Twilio even has a small investment fund to encourage startups to expand using their platform.   The startups receiving investment from the first fund include:

Magnolia Prime, which delivers voice messages to elderly patients, as configured by the patient’s clinician or caregiver. Callyo, also quite practical, aims to offer multifaceted crisis, emergency and tip line options for police departments. knockknock, targeted at businesses and consumers, routes phone systems to put consumers in touch with the customer service reps at the companies they want to speak with. FastCall411 aims to be the aide of the local salesman with call recording, analytics and lead scoring, while Volta serves as an A/B testing framework for outbound phone calls. And WorkersNow expedites the hiring process around contract construction gigs. Less practical, but more fun is applying Twilio’s texting capabilities to the sexting fancies of teens and young adults. Qwipd, for instance, can be used to convey flirtatious, albeit controlled, text messages with choose-your-own-ending flavor.

A major Twilio success recently came from GroupMe, born from TC disrupt in 2010 and purchased by Skype for a reported $85 million a year later.  They were powered by Twilio.

Twilio recently raised a $17 million Series C round of funding to maintain momentum after a big year, and continue hiring aggressively. The San Francisco-based company grew from 25 employees to nearly 100 in 2011, and increased its customer base by 400% to reach 75,000 developers.  Their usage has be nothing but astounding; notice the growth chart to the right.  After a few price drops in 2010 Twilio saw volume skyrocket and hasn’t looked back since.  They also recently announced an international expansion, to Canada and Europe so by no means will this trend slow down.

My question is:  What does Twilio look like in 5 years if they keep attracting young, innovating startups to leverage their communications platform for dirt cheap to bring radical change to our society?

The end goal for Twilio is to “open the black box of telecom, and move the world away from the legacy of Cisco and Microsoft’s big expensive [hardware] that you put in your closet and watch age. We’re reinventing with the cloud, and it gets better every time we deploy code.”

And what does AT&T look like in 5 years if they don’t do the same?  But what if they do?  Something is going to have to give…

@jnickhughes

Hey Uber, I Like Your Ride… But Not Sure It’s Worth The $143 You Charged Me

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I was charged $143 for a 5 mile Uber ride New Years Night and I am understandably not happy about it.

I like Uber, have been a fan for quite some time, a frequent rider and a brand advocate.  I am one of those people who pulls out my iPhone to show my  (low tech) friends a totally cool and new way to get a ride somewhere.

But maybe not so much anymore.

I feel like Uber was deceitful and lacked transparency on this decision.  Also, I think they did it on purpose to take advantage of their riders.  Uber made a recent business change they call “surge pricing” which is meant to be put in place on nights where demand greatly outpaces supply.  In basic terms, the more cars being hailed at a certain time leaves less cars left to pick up others.

So what to do?  Uber thinks the best decision is to jack up prices.  They call this a surcharge.  This is the email receipt I received afterwards.

When I hear the words surcharge, I think of a $10 fee or possibly something to that extend.  Uber thinks a surcharge is X times the ride amount is the appropriate way go.  Although they are stating they placed notifications and alerts at the point of opening the app and standing behind their decision,  I think it’s bullshit and here’s why.

I knew Uber would be more expensive New Years night.  They sent an email on the 28th, stating they proposed New Years change…. but conveniently  forgot to mention how much they would be increasing the rates.  My feeling is they did this on purpose, knowing if riders preemptively knew they would be charged up to 5X the normal rates they wouldn’t have even considered Uber.

Heres the email content:

We’ve only been in the Emerald City for a few short months but we’re already getting your patterns down. Whether you’re headed to the latest craft cocktail bar or going back to a well loved dive, you’re zipping around in Ubers like you own this city. Now that the mother of all party nights is upon us we know you’ll have a few glasses (read: bottles) of bubbly, and the last thing you want to do is call AAA for that tow-of-shame. We’re ramping up like crazy with the sole intent of providing a safe, convenient and stylish ride for as many Seattleites as possible on New Year’s Eve.

New Year’s Eve is what we call a *surge event* at Uber. This means we expect to see a massive demand spike and a supply shortage at the same time. During these events like NYE or Halloween there is a run on private cars in most cities and in order to ensure there are enough cars on the system (read: aka an Uber experience), we’ll be enabling surge pricing on New Year’s in a similar fashion to Halloween 2011. This means that rates on New Year’s Eve will likely increase during peak times of demand BUT when demand subsides or more supply becomes available, rates will automatically drop and you will ALWAYS know if there is a price increase before you request an Uber.

Champagne wishes and Uber dreams,

As you can read, how this was to be executed and the result on me, as the rider, is not mentioned.  All that was noted was that there was a possibility of an increase in rates based on increase in demand.  This is not transparency. Yes, they were on the right track about notifying riders and Uber followers about the change, but the particular way they calculated and executed this was totally wrong.

Uber has stated they used a dynamic pricing structure which may have been changing by the minute.  How the hell do riders know whether it’s going to be the same price or 5X the normal rates?  This is exactly why Taxi rates are controlled so closely, so no one gets out of control and starts jacking riders without their knowledge.  If Uber is going to cross the chasm to mainstream America they need to clean up this messy execution.

I could go on and on… but I won’t. I know I am not the only one pissed on this matter.  My point is transparency is not just a vague email or a short notification at a point in time where the rider has little other choices at hand.

@jnickhughes

Would You Rather Be Undervalued Or Underestimated?

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Being a first time CEO can be confusing, intimidating and downright scary.  You have a hundred things to do and no idea which way to look.  You feel the need to talk to a lot of people but it’s difficult to determine the ones you really need to spend time with.   You need to deal with legal, financial, organizational, strategic and other parts of the company on a daily basis yet might not be fully comfortable with each area just yet.

Everything rides on your shoulders.

Although this is not my first startup founder experience, it is my first as a CEO in, shall we say, the “big leagues”.  It has been brought to my attention this will be a significant challenge to me since my background lacks “normal tech startup experiences” and don’t fit the typical CEO path.  They say I will be underestimated.

Well, I say perfect.  Bring it!  I love challenges and believe the great ones are created through immense crucibles, where pressure either polishes them into greatness or crushes them into pieces.

As I ponder the reality I face, a question arose in my head:  Would you rather be undervalued or underestimated?

Undervalued means they have already sized you up and determine you don’t add much value to the ecosystem.

Underestimated means they are ignorantly judging you, still don’t know your potential and will be shocked when you reach it.

I have a hunch where I fall in respect to those two.  Do you know where you stand?

@jnickhughes

Wow, a massive jump in Seconds Accounts in the last 2 weeks!

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Looks at this!  On Nov 28th we released a new feature which allowed merchants to quickly self register a Seconds account in just a few steps.  The result – 20 new accounts created in less than 2 weeks.  Before the 28th, we had created less than a handful of accounts since it was not a streamlined process.  Now, any merchant anywhere in the county can quickly grab a new number to accept text messages and have a nicely designed mobile site to communicate with customers.

Wonder what the next year will look like?

Also, I wonder what the recent redesigns will bring?  I think our numbers will be out of the roof, but you be the judge:

Here’s the old one.

Here’s the new one.

Make No Mistake, Seattle Needs More Events Like The GeekWire Gala

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If you had the opportunity to attend the recent GeekWire Gala you will probably agree with me when I say it was awesome.

Was there some crazy entertainer or cool band?  No.

Were there fireworks or a kick ass pyro-technics?  Nope.

Was it for a special occasion like a reunion or anniversary?  Not really.

Yet  more than 500 people showed up in attendance from various pockets of the tech community.  Investors to startup founders to lawyers and aspiring entrepreneurs gathered for a night of talking tech and socializing.  I know it sounds like a normal Seattle Startup event, so you might be wondering why it was so awesome?

As I looked out over the crowded event I started to realize all these people, in just this one room, can help me become successful if they get to know me well enough.  And this is true for all of us in that room.

I give a very big thanks to the entire GeekWire staff and all others who helped put on the event.  Although most people arrived, had a drink or two and then left without realizing how important this gathering was for the health of our tight-knit community; it was not lost on me.

Every so often the “Seattle vs. Silicon Valley” argument boils up to the cognitive surface with various differing opinions shouting about who is better at the top of their lungs.  Regardless of your stance it’s fair to say we – Seattle –  have our own identity with our own startup and investment characteristics, for better or for worse.

Yet I cannot shake an off-the-cuff comment given to me at a startup event this fall from someone close to me at the time.  They said “Nick, go down to the valley and you can find something like this going on pretty much every single night.”  I was immediately taken back by the comment but once I thought about it a little more I started to grasp the deeper meaning of the statement.

It wasn’t about “the valley” at all.  It was about community.

And it is with that statement I come to the conclusion: if Seattle is going to continue to grow as a serious technology, startup, and investment epicenter we need more events like the GeekWire Gala.  We need more opportunities to come together and get to know each other – as individuals and as a larger community.  And it desperately needs to happen more often.

From Wikipedia, The term community has two distinct meanings:

  • a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household. The word can also refer to the national community or international community, and
  • in biology, a community is a group of interacting living organisms sharing a populated environment.

Notice the bold word interacting.  It is an important word – as a verb it indicates what we should be doing as a group of people.  We gather.  We interact.  We get to know each other.  We socialize.   We share common values.  Only when we are able to interact are we then able to possibly collaborate and do deals.

Interacting.  Hmmm, that’s an Interesting word  we find there, shall we dive a bit deeper… and find out what that word actually means?

  • communication of any sort, for example two or more people talking to each other, or communication among groups, organizations, nations or states: trade, migration, foreign relations, transportation,

Ah… there it is!  Communication – the one thing that will make or break any relationship.  So it seems to build a robust community we must continue to sharpen the communication lines between the individuals within our larger group.  As a relative newcomer to this scene, this makes a lot of sense to me.

What good is the “tech” or “startup” community here in Seattle if we just remain in our own silo’s, sitting behind our monitors in our own little offices.  An easy habit to form these days is thinking you, as an individual company, are building one something isolated from the outer world.  So we tend to want to stay within our own walls and this is a big mistake.  If you are apart of a large company or even a startup here in Seattle, you are a very important piece to a large organism.  Just as cells of the body must stay in constant communication with each other to remain in healthy stasis; so must we here in Seattle continue to communicate and interact so we can build a strong and healthy tech community.

What about using technology to virtually communicate?  Yes, we may banter back and forth via email and on Twitter but those are only extensions of community.  They don’t actually create a community.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we don’t have events and activities to cultivate the ecosystem.  Currently there are a number of events happening on a monthly basis in which we can participate.  To name a few:

  • StartupWeekend events
  • Poker 2.0
  • WTIA Events
  • Morning Coffee’s
  • Pitch events
  • Meetups

I am suggesting even more events need to be put together to create and foster the tech community here in Seattle.  We all are responsible to do something for the health of the larger community – that is if we are going to voice our opinions on the subject.  And the Gala illustrated larger events bringing together a lot of people can spawn interesting and advantageous opportunities, just as a being a part of a small group playing poker will do.  This is why I organized the Startup Crawl, it was a great time to relax with a beer in your hand and just talk openly with people you might not otherwise interact with.  Sometimes these events are the start of something special.

Do they all have to revolve around drinking alcohol?  No, not at all.  Whatever the event, it should enhance the strengthening of existing relationships at the same time encourage new comers to attend and make some initial and important connections to help them get further ingrained in the community.

We may not be able to have much impact on the investment macroeconomics here in Seattle but we sure as hell can do something about the over community interaction.  And interestingly enough… I believe the later will pull the former along towards a better day.

Shoppers, Please Don’t’ Fight At The Mall. Play Mallopoly Instead!

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The holidays are coming in full swing and that can only mean one thing – Malls.  If you are like me, you’re not overly excited to brave this crazy world for hours on end.  Crying babies, screaming kids, frustrated shoppers and too much perfume can give anyone a headache.   Also like me, you might get a bit disturbed by the fighting that seems to have become a Black (eye) Friday tradition.

Have no fear…. Point Inside is here to calm your nerves and bring a little more fun to the holiday shopping experience.  They are adding to the holiday spirit with the upcoming launch of a new in-app game, Mallopoly, inside the Point Inside Shopping & Travel app.  Players can win a $100 American Express Gift Card through a daily random drawing between now and Dec. 31, 2011. Players can also win the $1000 Grand Prize gift card to be drawn on Jan. 2, 2012.

Point Inside helps retailers increase sales and profits by engaging customers in real-time using micro-location, indoor mapping, personalized content and apps.  They must have the right idea, Google seems to be thinking the same thing, although I doubt Google has created a cool game of Mallopoly for holiday shoppers.  The game play is pretty simple. Players gain entries into the drawing for the following:

• By claiming a place in the app, such as a store or restaurant (one place per day)

• When your place page is viewed (one view per place page per person per day)

• By sharing the app with a friend (one share is counted per day)

Playing the game requires updating to version 3.1 of the Point Inside Shopping & Travel app. The Android version will be live Tuesday; iPhone app should be live by the end of the week.  Press release is below.

Mallopoly™ Game to Launch within Point Inside Shopping & Travel App

Players can claim places within the app to be eligible to win daily $100 prizes and $1000 Grand Prize

 

Bellevue, WA — November 30, 2011 —Point Inside, Inc. (www.pointinside.com) today announced the launch of the Holiday Edition of its new in-app game, Mallopoly™. By “claiming” places in the app, such as Nordstrom in Bellevue Square Mall, players become eligible to win the Daily Prize of $100 and the Grand Prize of $1000. Players receive additional entries in the random drawing when another person visits their place inside the app or the player shares the app with another person.

“This is an exciting step forward in evolution of our shopping and travel app,” says Josh Marti, CEO at Point Inside. “We’ve had a tremendously positive response when we launched the latest version of Point Inside Shopping & Travel app with hundreds of thousands of deals. Now we’re creating a completely new level of shopper engagement by adding a very rewarding game to the app.”

The gameplay and rules are simple. A player gets an entry into the daily drawing when they “claim” one of the millions of places in the Point Inside app. Additional entries are gained from people visiting that place and sharing the app with friends. Winners for the daily $100 American Express Gift Card are randomly drawn from the previous day’s entries. All entries through December 31, 2011, are eligible for the Grand Drawing of a $1000 American Express Gift Card. Mallopoly starts Monday, November 28, and is available immediately for Android platforms; iPhone will be available shortly following iTunes App Store approval.

“This Holiday Edition of Mallopoly is the first of many for the game. We see it as another way to make more shoppers aware of great deals in both their local areas and in the stores they like,” says Marti.

The Point Inside Shopping & Travel app features include:

  • Hundreds of thousands of deals by location and venue, such as a specific mall or selected geographic areas
  • Special offers from national brands and local retailers
  • Listings of millions of retailers searchable by location and category including clothing and electronics
  • In-venue navigation features with routing
  • Maps of over 1300 shopping malls, airports, theme parks and other points of interest.
  • Store and shop directory information including store hours, contact information 
and special events
  • Complete list of services including restaurants, restrooms, ATMs, parking, elevators, escalators, rental cars, gates and ticketing counters.
  • Driving directions to locations (available for Android)

About Point Inside, Inc.

Point Inside has transformed the shopping experience by enabling retailers to engage proactively with customers through their smartphones at every point along the purchase path. Mobile apps driven by the Point Inside Interact™ platform increase sales, loyalty and customer satisfaction from initial research and product discovery to the creation of shopping lists and in-store activities. This new level of customer engagement is made possible through Point Inside’s patent-pending technologies in indoor mapping, micro-location services and customer engagement.

Point Inside also offers consumers a free mobile application, Point Inside for Shopping and Travel., on iOS and Android devices. Users can quickly find stores, gates, kiosks, restrooms, elevators, escalators, and other guest services in over 1300 malls, airports, theme parks and other venues.

Founded in 2009 and based just outside of Seattle, the company is led by a team of executives with decades of experience developing mobile and location-based services (LBS) applications for companies such as Amazon, AT&T, Boeing, and Qualcomm.  Additional details can be found at: www.pointinside.com; Facebook: www.facebook.com/PointInside; Twitter: www.twitter.com/PointInside.

@jnickhughes

Siri And The Last Mile To Utopia

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The amazing Siri, Apple’s new voice recognition technology, has been the topic of much conversation over the last month.  I too am left speechless when asking questions that at first blush seem ridiculous.  Responses to questions such as “Siri, what do you look like?”  or “Siri, will you marry me?” will elicit laughter and jaw dropping looks only magicians are used to seeing.

All fun and games aside, what Apple (not Microsoft) just released represents a fundamental shift in how we will interact with computers – and to an extent the rest of the world.  Even Eric Schmidt knows we will no longer type things into a long search box and wade through a sea of links to find what we “think” we are looking for.   We will also not be required to re-identify ourselves and re-enter our credentials each time we want to make a digital purchase.  I previously believed the future of search will be found within your loose contacts and network of friends – and  still do.  But in addition to leveraging others to find information, it has become very apparent we will now leverage new blends of artificial intelligence and intelligent data systems integrated within our mobile devices to create very personal consumer experiences.  And we’ll accomplish this all this through simple text, voice and gestures thanks to natural language processing within your mobile.  Like it or not, in a very short period of time you will not be able to properly function in society without your trusty device.

Simple and inane tasks can already be accomplished through Siri.  Speaking basic directives into your phone will help to find any personal contact you have in your phone.  Such things as setting reminders, alarms, meetings, checking email, checking the weather, searching the web to look up random information and interestingly enough just having a plain conversation with your phone can now be done by voice dictation.

And the big one – sending text messages to others by speaking to Siri – has the potential to change society in ways you never thought possible.  A quick spoken message gets translated into text and sent off to the exact recipient you have determined, all without clicking or finger swiping anything is simply amazing.  And it’s now here.

Siri (or nicknamed Hubotsiri) is the latest in a long line of iOS features to be stretched to the limits, enhancing functionality, capability, and allowing users to realize the full potential of technologies within their devices. Much like buying a Ferrari – you pay a lot, it looks nice, runs well and oozes luxury. Yet until you get it off-road, you can’t really see what it’s capable of due to the restrictions beset upon road users.

As impressive as Siri can be, we still hear naysayers balking at the current ineffectiveness of the technology.  They say it’s not perfect, it can’t yet complete complex tasks such as interacting with the Apps on your device, and when in doubt it defaults to a web search for your request.  Although I am fascinated with Siri I must agree we have only scratched the surface and more work is ahead.

It seems Apple has figured out how to voice activate basic tasks, but what about more practical applications that can make your everyday life easier and more fluid?  How will voice translation and Artificial Intelligence radically transform how you go about your everyday life?  Below is an attempt to peel the layers on what it will take for society to get away from the absurd  and onto the applicable.

Siri, Can You Please Make My Life Easier?

Imagine being able to say things like “send a message to the coffee shop and tell them I will be there in 10 minutes and I will have the usual” and by the time you get there your correct drink it sitting on the counter already paid for.  This is not too far off… it just requires a few more pieces to be put in place.

The answer lies in understanding what exactly Siri is, what exactly are those other pieces, and how they need come together for the above scenario to become reality.  Siri is basically a search engine, one many think has the potential to eat Googles Lunch.  Or better said, it’s a “do” engine in the sense that you can dictate what you want done and Siri will mostly carry out the task.  I say mostly because even though Siri represents the first mile, the possibilities can only become reality when something else comes in as the last mile to fulfill  your request.  Siri can accomplish any task as long as the information is readily available and in the correct form to be delivered to the user.  Would Google have worked so well if there were no links to bring back?

So for Siri , or any AI from a mobile device for that matter, to connect and help you easily communicate with your local community the last mile must be completed in a way that makes sense for Siri.  One can communicate with Siri in audio/voice, yet Siri communicates with databases and other systems via bits.   The last mile must be accessible via the web, enabled to send and receive text based communications, and ultimately be built from the ground up using data as the foundation.

We can see from the article How Siri Works we have a long way ahead to complete the last mile. Siri can’t understand everything. It can do a certain set of key tasks.  From the article:

  • Interact with the calendar.
  • Search contacts.
  • Read and write messages (text and email).
  • Interact with the Maps app and location services.
  • Forward search phrases to certain pre-defined data providers (Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo! Finance, Yelp, Wolfram|Alpha, or Wikipedia).

This is still an impressive and—most importantly—wildly useful set of functions. But it is a limited, focused set. And that’s what makes me think Siri’s “AI” may actually work.

It seems to me that Siri consists of three layers: a speech-to-text analyzer, a grammar analyzer, and a set of service providers. If all three of these work well, then Siri will be fun and helpful. If one of them is as troubled as traditional intelligent agents have tended to be, then Siri will go the same way those other agents went—tumbling into the trash heap of misguided innovations.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the world does not make sense to Siri. Yet.  Although searching Google will bring back (s0me sort of) local merchant website for most entities in the U.S. and around the world, they are still stuck in the analog world when it comes to communication, interaction or commerce.  Most merchants still require a voice call to reach them and when wanting to transact, one must be present with cash or credit card.   “Forward thinking” merchants offer online and mobile app transaction options, yet the experience is so cumbersome most people give up and take the extra time to physically make the purchase.

Siri will truly transform your life once the last mile is complete.

Ironically the traditional telephone served as the last mile for quite some time, when the most popular connection between two recipients was voice line.   Voice ruled the land  until data – better known as text messaging – became the most popular mode of communication for our new society.  Although the web is based in ‘telephone’ connection, we now communicate in a vasty different language.  It is interesting to note more than 2.2 trillion text messages were sent in the last year, yet little to none were received by local merchants.

Yeah, you read that right.  Imagine that, the most popular mode of communication is not accepted at any place of business in your community.  This would be like you walking into a merchant and asking a question in english (the obvious main language here in the United States) and they don’t even look at you or say a word.  Yet that is exactly what is happening today with mobile messaging.  The fact that more messages will be sent next year than last year, and even more will be sent the next year should be freaking out any manager or business owner right now.  If consumer activities are to be automated through voice diction, short messaging and artificial intelligence then somethings need to change.

The last mile is comprised of a few major technological enhancements that, when adopted, will complete the transformation and bring this new vision into reality.

Merchants need a short messaging service

It is fair to say text messaging has taken over as the most common form of digital communication on the planet.  For a bit of perspective, just look at your own life.  What do you use more often with your mobile phone, text messaging or voice calls?  Local merchants must get up to speed and find a simple way to send/receive text messages to optimize their business for mobile commerce.  Arguably, this is a bigger deal than in the mid-90’s when everyone was touting “you need a website.”  We are talking about basic communications and commerce.   In the next few years we’ll see a fundamental shift in the economy as merchants and business adopt this popular method of communication and use it as new form of commerce.  An interesting note: once a merchant is set up to receive text messages, mobile users are able to simply voice dictate messages to quickly place an order with the merchant using Siri.  It’s awesome!

Customers and merchants need a personalized connection

Personalization and socialization are the new black on the web, yet even today when I call a local merchant they still ask me to identify myself and request I read my payment information (aloud) if I want to make a purchase.  Interestingly, this does not change when I am present.  As I walk in the door they have no idea who I am, how many times I have visited their location, and what my purchase history with them might look like.  In a word, they are ignorant.  They lack the necessary and vital information to not only improve their operations but also make my customer experience much much better.

A whole new world of possibilities opens up when personalized connections between customers and merchants is available.  Customers are able to quickly find and message a merchant, requesting more information and making purchases when and where they feel most compelled.  Merchants are not only afforded a more efficient method of communications, but a unique perspective on each customer and a clearer picture of their entire customer base – in real time.  The possibilities are endless when local merchants fully embrace the mobile world.

Mobile Payments need to be invisible

Connections between customers and merchants are great but what both are actually looking for is the almighty transaction.  The more simple and frictionless the transaction the more we, as customers, will spend.  This should be music to a merchants ears yet there seems to be some resistance to employing new digital payment technologies.   This challenge/opportunity falls back on the tech community, nudging us to continue on forward with our innovative genius at the helm.

Technically speaking, when a transaction occurs neither I, as the customer, or them as the merchant should have to do anything.  If I have already connected digitally with the merchant and my payment credentials have already been cleared, payment should be invisible from then on.  Yes other requirements such as security and merchandising are involved, but those should also be taken care of behind the scenes.  But, I am so bothered right now!  Why do I still need to stand in a line for them to swipe my card and require my signature before I leave?  This is archaic, and if enhanced to the above scenario the merchant will not only provide a better customer experience for me but increase throughput leading to an increased bottom line.

Mobile coverage needs to improve

This one needs no justification, only a fair request to the major  mobile carriers of the world.  What good is Siri if I can’t get a response?  Flat out, we need better coverage and we needed it like, yesterday.  If mobile devices are going to be the center of our lives we cannot be at the mercy of “the number of bars” we have at a certain location or the chance opportunity we still have 3G at the top of our device.  Again, we are encroaching on a time in history where if my mobile device fails me, I am hopeless.  It kind of like if at certain times my Visa card worked when swiped, and sometimes it just didn’t… for no reason at all… except for maybe the restaurant was positioned on the wrong side of the street.  Yeah, I know… This is absurd and it needs to change.

The above may seem crazy to some but to others like us it’s the reality we are working towards each day.  We live in a truly amazing time in history and when the four things I just laid out come together… only Utopia waits.