I made this poll on Hacker News a little over a week ago. For some unknown weird reason it didn't make it to the front page, but it still got enough votes for the (non-scientific) results to be interesting.

Steve Welch is the author of We Are All Born Entrepreneurs, a partner at Dreamit Ventures, and the founder of Mitos, a biotech company that he sold to Parker Hannifin in 2007. Steve talks about the skills required for entrepreneurs to get traction. He also explains how his company got traction through cold calls, creativity at conferences and product development.

This interview is ~30min. If you just want the audio, use the mp3 version. You can also get the video on your iPod/iPhone via iTunes.

For more interviews, visit the Traction Book site.

Garry Tan is a co-founder at posterous, "the dead simple place to post everything." Posterous was part of Y Combinator in the summer of 2008, and immediately got traction after being launched on Techcrunch.  Garry explains how product development, idea generation, YC, previous experience and execution contributed to their success. He also gives advice on press and customer support.

This interview is ~40min. If you just want the audio, use the mp3 version. You can also get the video on your iPod/iPhone via iTunes.

For more interviews, visit the Traction Book site.

Justin Kan is a founder of Justin.tv, the place to watch and record live video. Justin.tv started out as a reality show, and before that the founders had a YC-backed calendar startup (Kiko). Justin explains how they made two major pivots and translated initial press about the show into the current business. Justin also talks about scaling and idea generation.

This interview is ~40min. If you just want the audio, use the mp3 version. You can also get the video on your iPod/iPhone via iTunes.

For more interviews, visit the Traction Book site.

Several friends have told me angel investing is not a good way to make money. If you can do the YC/Ron Conway strategy that is one thing, and if you just want to give back that's another, but doing it at my level is a waste of money.

I do want to give back, but I also want to make money with my angel investing. So I've been thinking a lot about strategies to employ to fulfill both goals. To that end, I've been creating spreadsheets that I'd like to share with you.

First, check out the Angel investing portfolio scenario planner (Google doc spreadsheet). To get an editable copy, select 'Make a copy...' from the File menu (or Ctrl+Shift+S).

I've been thinking about something for a while, and to be honest, still haven't reached any firm conclusions: what to think about self-published "e-books"?  I'm curious to hear your opinions.

For instance:

• http://gettingreal.37signals.com/
• http://www.railsupgradehandbook.com/
• http://createyourproglang.com/

These are all: electronic, in that they aren't distributed as real, paper books, have no ISBN number, and are generally only available via the author's web site (you won't find them on Amazon.com).  They aren't simply on-line, PDF versions of real books.

They're certainly a departure from the traditional model of having a publisher, editor, and real, physical books that could be purchased from book stores.  They don't appear to have been through any kind of formal editing or quality control process.  The prices seem to differ quite a bit; the first one is $19, the second one is $12, and the last one is $30.77.

For the authors, the appeal is obvious: they get to keep all of the money, and don't have to fool around with a lot of "process".

Consumers, on the other hand, have to consider different aspects: with a "real book", the bureacracy and process exist to guarantee some minimum standards of quality.  If you buy an O'Reilly book, you know that it's probably like many of the other books they sell: perhaps it won't stand the test of time like something written by Knuth, but it'll be a pretty good guide to the technology it describes, most likely be someone who is indeed an expert in that area.  If I buy some random PDF on the internet, it may come from someone who really knows their stuff, or it may be junk.  On the other hand, were this market to grow, theoretically prices could come down.  Since the people who are authoring the book don't have to fool around with editing, printing, and so on, and get to keep all the money themselves, they could in theory keep their prices significantly lower than someone creating a more 'traditional' book with a lot of overhead.  That is, of course, if the book is one where there is competition in its niche.  Right now a lot of these books that pop up on my radar are written by domain experts.  However, what's to prevent a lot of people from jumping in and attempting to make a quick buck with a flashy looking web site?  Buying books based only on reputation?  That might lead to people who are really good authors, but perhaps not well known as "doers" (they didn't invent the technology in question) being left out in the cold.  Also, there is something of an unknown quantity about "pdf books".  For instance, after raking in a bunch of cash with theirs, 37signals put it on their web site, completely for free.  That had to leave the guy who bought it the day before it went free feeling like a bit of a chump.  At least with a 'real book', even if the contents are posted on the internet, you have a physical object that belongs to you.  I wonder how bad piracy is, and how bad it might be were these to become more popular?  Another thing worth noting is that, via services like Lulu.com, it *is* possible to print these out.

In any case, I think things are likely to change with time, as we aren't dealing with a static situation, but rather one where a changing landscape maylead to different outcomes, as the key variables... vary.

I am honestly unsure of what to make of this development.  How do you see the market for "home brewed" pdf ebooks evolving?

I'm really proud to be in the Philly Inquirer today in both the offline (business, pg3) and online versions (Philly Deal$ blog).

Knight is also attracted to simplified search engines like Gabriel Weinberg's Valley Forge-based DuckDuckGo.com. "It's Google Light," says Weinberg. "They strip out all the garbage - video, ads. And it's intelligent. You search for 'wolf,' it'll ask, 'What wolf do you mean?' and list some choices."

DuckDuckGo.com is the brainchild of Weinberg, a twentysomething graduate of MIT who sold his Web site, NamesDatabase, to Classmates Online Inc. in 2006, and retired to raise his child and invest in new companies with his wife, a GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. statistician, in 2006.

"Around M.I.T., we had a lot of people starting companies," he said. "We started this group, Hackathon."

His Philly chapter "is growing slowly over time," with help from people at the LiquidHub consulting group, among others. They meet every month, sometimes in an office at Cira Centre, sometimes at the Bear Rock Cafe in King of Prussia. "There's random people making sites," he explained. "We try to put them together."

For the record, I have a few minor corrections...

Jimmy Wales is a co-founder of Wikipedia and Wikia. Wikia hosts hundreds of popular Wikipedia-like wikis on specific subjects, e.g. star wars. Jimmy explains how each project got traction over time. He also talks about press and vision.

This interview is ~30min. At Jimmy's request, we did not record video, so I put his picture up throughout the audio. If you just want the audio, use the mp3 version. You can also get the video on your iPod/iPhone via iTunes.

For more interviews, visit the Traction Book site.

I have recently gone about opening a "Partita IVA" ( http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partita_IVA ) so I can act as an independant consultant here.  Like everything here, it's a pain in the neck, but opening it wasn't all that bad, compared to other close encounters of the bureaucratic kind that I've had.

When it came time to send out my first bill, of course I had to get the accountant to help me put it together (simply sending a bill with the amount to be paid would be way too easy).  The crowning touch, though, was that I had to go to the "tabaccheria" and purchase a 1.81 (one Euro, eight-one cents) "marca da bollo" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_revenue_stamp ) to affix to the aforementioned bill.  This is only necessary, however, in cases where the bill exceeds 77.47 (seventy-seven Euro, fourty-seven cents).  The end result was that between asking the accountant for help, going over to the store to get the stamp, and so on, I probably wasted in excess of a half an hour of my life for something that really isn't that complicated.

Who dreams this bullshit up, anyway?

Duck Duck Go is intended to be a general purpose search engine and that isn't going to change. Our user base certainly reflects this purpose, i.e. is quite varied on every metric I've tried to measure.

It’s the question I hear second-most often, right after “How do I hire a good developer?”. Marketing is one of those skills a startup can’t do without, and realistically, probably shouldn’t be started without. Most founders have at least some marketing skills, and that works for a while. But they reach a point where they want to focus on what they’re great at, and don’t know how to determine if someone else is as good at marketing as the founder is at coding, business, etc. If you’re in that spot, or just in the unenviable position of trying to attract customers / users to an idling completed product, here’s your guide to choosing someone who can help turn up the heat.

What is Good Marketing?

Good marketing exists at the intersection of awareness, analysis, and creativity.

1. Awareness: Of the market, of how it will perceive different messages, of what others are doing to reach your market, of how your market communicates with each other, and of trends within related markets that may be applicable to yours.
2. Analysis: The ability to take information and create meaning. Being able to answer more than one “why?” about a change’s occurrence. Being able to predict more than one scenario, and explain the factors that make each more / less likely.
3. Creativity: The ability to create new methods, rather than just improvements to existing ones.

What Skills Does a Marketer Need?

Every marketer must have a well-honed talent for effective communication. Someone with average communication skills can take information and restate it in way they’re better able to understand it. Someone with above-average communication skills can take information and restate it in a way that others will be better able to understand it. Above-average communicators can take the same content and frame it many different ways (“in need of repairs” becomes “fixer-upper”). Most importantly for applications, above-average communicators can translate features into benefits.

For web-based businesses, a marketer also needs to be skilled at the following:

• Knowledge of incentives. Understanding what motivates people (to purchase, to participate, to create) is essential for marketing.
• Search Engine Optimization. Search engine traffic drives signups/sales directly, assists with referrals, and provides additional opportunities. A marketer should know how to identify what terms to target, how to find out how often people are searching for different terms, how to increase your rankings, and how ranking well for different terms will accomplish your business goals.
• Content Creation. For cash-strapped startups, being able to create interesting content is key for inbound marketing strategies to bring users. Even if you’re not trying to bring in customers, creating interesting content will get you noticed in your industry, and in the media, leading to partnership, investment, and acquisition opportunities.
• Analytics. Startups that want to accomplish their goals must be able to measure them, and they must have a marketer that’s able to test different means of accomplishing them. You can only improve efficiency by seeing what affects it, whether it’s A/B testing your site, or determining which of your marketing efforts are getting the most bang for your buck (or effort).

How do you Find a Good Marketer?

The best marketers combine passion with the ability to communicate it. A good marketer for your startup is going to be one that understands your target audience, preferably by being a member of it… unless your target market is people who are bad at marketing.

One of the best ways to find candidates is to identify the marketing people at related, but not competing, services targeting a similar demographic, and ask them to recommend someone.

How do you Determine if They Have the Skills?

The best evidence is always just that: evidence. If they can show the results they specifically generated for projects (“I increased…”, not “My company increased…”), that’s excellent.

Some questions you may want to ask in an interview are:

• How would you describe my company to a friend you wanted to use it?
  • Their answer should describe benefits, from a user point of view, rather than features.
• What are two specific types of potential users you think we could better focus on reaching, and how? – or – What are two specific ways you can see our product being used, and how should our marketing target people who would most use it one of those ways?
  • They should demonstrate an ability to make some kind of intelligent segmentation of your overall market into audiences that you can create specific messages or use specific mediums to reach.
• What trends do you see in our industry that we could tap into, to attract more users?
  • Here they should either show you that they know the scene well, or that they’re motivated enough to do research about it. The trends they recommend tapping into should be people-focused.

Be Open to Change, but Establish Trust & Test It

A good marketer can only help you if you let them, and that may mean changing that front-page description that you think is just fine, or targeting search terms that seem counter-intuitive. But remember that there’s a reason you’re looking for marketing help: they’ve learned lessons you haven’t yet!

Work with a new marketing team member to create clear, measurable goals. Provide clear priorities for how you want different resources (their time, development time, money) used. Pursue new marketing efforts with set expectations for when and how they’ll be measured, and let the results speak for themselves.

In an update to an earlier article I posted, it appears that the Google executives in question have been convicted:

http://www.corriere.it/salute/disabilita/10_febbraio_24/dirigenti-google-condannati_29ebaefe-2122-11df-940a-00144f02aabe.shtml (in Italian)

They were convicted for having failed to block the publication of a video showing some teenagers picking on and hitting another minor with Down's syndrome.

It will be interesting to see how Google reacts.  Apparently, the court believes that Google is criminally responsible for videos its users happen to post, which means that they would, in theory, have to personally review every video submitted to determine whether they are going to be infringing on someone's rights because of its content?

Update:

Here's a New York Times link:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/24/business/AP-EU-Italy-GoogleTrial.html

Update 2:

"cate" posted a link to Google's official response: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/serious-threat-to-web-in-italy.html

Also, it's really incredible to read the comments here (in Italian): http://vitadigitale.corriere.it/2010/02/processo_vivi_down_google_cond.html

Most of them are against this ruling, but a significant number think it's a good thing, which just goes to show that you can't put all the blame on politicians for Italy's woes: someone is voting for them, after all.

Join the conversation!, the Cluetrain Manifesto said. And every year new businesses / bloggers / young professionals hop eagerly aboard, charging into your blog comments / presentations / conferences to say:

“Hi! Great post / talk / point. Could you answer a question you already answered in it? Here’s something you said, restated in a slightly different way. Now, could you do something for me? This task, or that task, that has no clear benefit to you, and by the way, visit my website at www.mywebsite.com. Thanks! Great post! Bye!”

A-wha? Clearly, this isn’t the way anyone wants to come off, but all too often people in a hurry to “participate” (promote) leave only a sense of vapid selfishness behind, at best annoying those they interacted with.

But there are ways to accomplish your goals and provide value to the people you interact with. The web really is a conversation, sometimes slower paced, sometimes a massive interaction of hundreds of people at once. Just like real conversations, one of the most important things to do before joining in is to listen, and listen carefully. Many of the misguided blog comments I’ve seen don’t even use (or know) the blog author’s name. Listening is about more than understanding the topic; it’s about understanding the speaker’s perspective on it, and opportunities to provide value to both him and his other listeners.

Ways to Add Value

Once you’ve taken the time to be mindful of the context of a conversation, you still have the problem of how to think of something valuable to say. One of the best frameworks is the Six Ws: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How?

• Who? – Putting a human face on a situation, talking about how someone has / is dealing with it. Sometimes who is you; personal anecdotes that illustrate a point from the discussion (or one of your own), are enjoyable to read.

• What? – Most of the time this is the conversation itself, but sometimes (particularly objective news reports or press releases), there’s opportunity to turn information into meaning. “What does this mean?” is a question many people want answers to.

• When? – What’s the time context around this topic? Has it come up before? Were there previous discussions / events that you can point out as related? (It’s even better to synopsize points from these previous discussions that haven’t come up in this one.)

• Where? – What’s the geographic context? Can you provide a local angle / anecdote? Or identify similar conditions that make the topic / event relevant in other locations?

• Why? – What are the further considerations around a topic (e.g. who gains / loses)? Why is all about using your natural intelligence, logic, and experience to add insight.

• How? – What led to this? What factors contributed? What is the actual process (if it’s one many aren’t familiar with)?

Essentially, I look for a question that the discussion hasn’t covered yet, and try to answer it. Sometimes it’s valuable just to ask the question, but you have to be more careful with this — it can come across as superior, or imply that the conversation starter hasn’t gone to enough effort to supply more information. They key is to contribute something because you think it will be valuable to those involved, not just to contribute.

Join the conversation. And say something worth hearing.

My post on Federal expenditures had a nice chart. So here is the equivalent state chart, which I got from here.

"For example, Alaska and West Virginia each spend 11 percent of their budgets on K-12 education, while Michigan, at the other end of the spectrum, spends 31 percent. Similarly, Medicaid makes up 10 percent or less of state budgets in Alabama, Hawaii, and Wyoming but more than 30 percent of the budgets in Maine, Missouri, and Pennsylvania."

Depending on what you count in"Safety Net Programs", interest payments can be 4th or 5th. I think that understates its importance, though, because of how fast it is currently growing. If unchecked, it will be 10-12% in only a few years.

Happy Valentine's day. Here's something I hate: tl;dr comments.