THE DREAM IN ACTION

Foursquare’s first direct relationship of note was with the Brooklyn Museum. The museum saw the obvious value of visibility into who checked-in and decided to embrace the opportunity to directly provide it’s visitors with tips and tricks around the museum. The created an interactive experience and essentially a personally guided tour! Awesome. Other institutions saw the obvious value in this type of partnership and wanted in, as I said before, the people who get in early will benefit the most. Tristan is killing it in driving these partnerships and infusing compelling reasons for users to checkin and amplifying the value of the checkin.

Our next announcement was that Harvard University got on board by populating over 30 tips for both students and visitors all around campus. The cheeky headlines read, “Foursquare goes to school” and they were right. With Harvard U. on board Foursquare was learning that the potential for these partnerships were reDONKulous. Harvard used the Foursquare platform to populate a virtual tour guide with tips like…

@ Harvard Hall: In 1764, Harvard Hall burned down in a nor’easter, taking with it almost the entire College library & John Harvard’s book collection. (December 9, 2009)

@ Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage: An American landmark since 1960 & voted best burgers in America! Try “The American Idol” burger w/ bacon, cheese, mushrooms and onions. (December 8, 2009) [Link]

Can you imagine the potential of the worlds best location based social network and the worlds best restaurant guide teaming up? Exclusive tips from Zagat about the highest rated restaurants in major cities like Chicago, New York, and San Francisco becomes very interesting for the foodies out there. Did someone say Foursquare Foodie badge? I think so!

Oh snap, with a Foursquare/Bravo partnership 4SQ enters 90 million American living rooms and hits mainstream big timeness. BravoTV’s experts and celebs give tips about the venues they love so that when you check in, you’ll see their exclusive tips integrating your checkins with that of the BravoTV shows. Everything from Michael Cohen of Miami Social, to Patti Stranger from Millionaire Matchmaker…know you’ll be in the know like never before, and you can live vicariously through the shows and their stars.

@ Joe Allen: This is where the understated in-crowd always dines. You actually need reservations because the food and This is where the understated in-crowd always dines. The menu changes often but for lunch, the La Scala salad is so good!  Their fish selections are also notable. -Michael Cohen, Miami Social (1 day ago)

@ Dave and Buster’s – Hollywood: Sports bars attract hotties. That’s why I love the wings at Dave & Busters. -Patti Stanger, Millionaire Matchmaker (1 day ago)

The institutional partnerships are taking things to a whole new level. Foursquare was always praised for being a game that provided real world, offline value, but with these partnerships that value was just amplified.

Why raise $30 million to hire an enormous, nationwide sales force if you could use the power of existing sales teams for a fraction of the cost? Recently, I’ve been thinking about how startups can leverage other, larger, companies to build out their model. After all, a startups purpose for existence is to test their model. So why wouldn’t a startup leverage every existing system possible to keep costs low and test the model?

An increasing trend in startups, for good great reason, is to use Facebook Connect to leverage the existing social graph. Look at Foursquare, HotPotato, or OMGICU, all great examples of instantly connecting via FB connect to pull in all of your friends from likely your largest existing friend network. The time and wasted money that these startups would spend developing a brand new social graph is ridiculous.

There are so many opportunities for rapid growth through this type of “existing system leveraging”. With Foursquare I’ve been working hard to get as many venues involved and offering specials in the application as possible, so why wouldn’t I take my own medicine here. I try to use, excuse me, partner with the people who already have relationships with these venues. It turns out there are marketing teams who have great relationships with large groups of bars and restaurants, working directly with these people may bring in 10-20 venues in one fell swoop rather than me pounding on each venues doors individually. Or, another example is liquor distributors? They have strong relationships with bars and can possibly influence the end price of the product to a customer who say, checks in on Foursquare…get it. There are sales teams that work with these people and have a system in place already like Coke, or Zoom media (those ads above urinals), etc. etc. etc., the list could go on.

Whether you’re building a social app, or a utility that sits on top of the ’social graph’ I’d encourage you to look at ways to use existing systems, social or otherwise, as your best distribution channels. The cost is likely lower, and the impact likely higher.

What existing system have you leveraged?

This widget will live in the right sidebar for at least a month. If you’ve enjoyed reading just a little bit, please take the 1 minute it will take to answer these questions so that I can learn a bit about you guys. Love you!

If you want to embed this widget on your own blog, go to http://www.hunch.com/blogger/ (you’ll need to have a Hunch account and be logged in).

Back in October I wrote a post about wanting more feedback on this blog. I vowed that if you gave me feedback, I’d listen and sculpt the content of this blog in such a way that it was valuable for you, the reader. I’ve often struggled with the question, should I write for the audience? or, should I write for myself? I’ve found that a mix is the best for all of us. If I’m not really engaged and passionate about what I’m writing it’s probably not going to come off as very interesting to you, and sure as hell if I’m not interested in the topic then I’m wasting my time writing.

What I haven’t done to-date is share the feedback I received so I want to do that today. It’s important to me to let you know that your “voice” is being heard, and that I actually have been listening to your feedback. One of my favorite startups out there is Rypple, a Toronto based company that creates tools that make it easier to grow as a professional. Their feedback tool which allows for completely anonymous input through email or in this case an embeddable widget (which is still in the side bar to the right) is perfect. The people at Rypple are some of the best and you should follow their progress and use their tools at your company. Check out (@jaygoldman, @ddebow, @dpriemer) Anyway, anything you write in that box is completely anonymous, otherwise I’d give some credit to those who contributed. You know who you are so thank you!

Here are a handful of the tips and feedback that I got…

“I like to hear what motivates you as an entrepreneur– to hear your special reason and drive.”

“I love what you write about – its a must read blog… thanks! It would be great if you wrote more about some controversial topics – the BS of arrogant entrepreneurs, the Kool -Aid drinkers etc. But – don’t be negative, just honest.”

I really like this idea and I’ve not written about it yet. I definitely plan to… (I frickin hate the Kool-Aid drinkers)

“blog what you want, it’ll be best if you like it.”

“Could you talk more about lessons learned from start-ups and their culture and how that influences what you are doing at GE. but in general, keep mixing it up and making it interesting in every blog post.”

Because I do work at GE full time I’ve refrained from writing about it so far. I have been contemplating writing a series of ‘how I use startup lessons in the corporate world’ type posts. I appreciate your feedback here and will start to take more action on it.

“Your stuff is great Ryan, one of my regular reads.”

And that kind of feedback is what keeps me going! I appreciate all of you who take the time to read this blog a few times a week. I will continue to listen to your feedback, feel free to post it in any posts comment section or anonymously in the Rypple tool to the right ——->

By now we are all well-aware of the devastating effects of the earthquake that struck Haiti two weeks ago. You’re also likely aware of the uber successful campaign ran by Red Cross to text 9-0-9-9-9 with the word “Haiti” to auto donate $10 of your next cell phone bill. Genius. As terrible as the event was and is, it’s heart warming to think that the world has come together to support the people who need it most. Sometimes it looks like the world is going to shit but events like this although terrible seems to bring us back together, and that’s a great, needed, thing.

via (drewconway.com)

This graph effectively shows which countries are pulling their weight in the giving category. It measure giving vs. gdp. One of the reasons that the US has done such a great job helping is the grass roots nature of our giving. Yes, it’s the same grass roots giving style that Obama captured during his campaign run. So, how do you contribute to the grass roots effort?

Here is an easy opportunity to lend your monetary support for relief efforts, and have a blast doing it. This Friday at High Tops in Lincoln Park, you’ll be able to spend all that money you probably would spend on booze anyway, and send it to Haiti. All of the Happy Hours proceeds will be donated to Save the Children.

Details:
Date: Friday, January 29
Location: High Tops: 2462 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago [website]
Time: 8pm
Deal: From 8-10pm, $30 all-you-can-drink domestic drafts and well drinks, as well as $2 shots and $5 bombs.  From 10pm to close, its $3 you-call-its with that wristband.  Appetizers will also be served.
Charity: 100% OF MONEY COLLECTED WILL GO TO SAVE THE CHILDREN’s DIRECT EFFORTS IN HAITI [http://www.savethechildren.org/]

Bonus: Anonymous donors will match the first $600 of donations!

How It Works:

Donations will be collected through this page and at the door of the event.  Please print your confirmation email from FirstGiving.com and bring it with you on Friday to collect your wristband. ONLY donations of $30 or more are eligible for the drink special!

Who to contact with questions?
Allen Burt: burtra@gmail.com
Allen Penn: allen.penn@gmail.com

Recently, I’ve heard a lot of startup type people say, I’m a product guy. Without to much analysis I’ve always taken that to mean, the business guy, not the developer. I was mostly right with that snap judgment, but as I heard the term/title more and more I decided to jump into the details of the product manager role and the “product guy”. I found that there are those who dislike the product guy title, the self proclaimed “product guy bigots” and there are those who epitomize the role of “product guy“, and likely bask in it. It seems to be just generic enough of a title to get criticism from all angles, so what does it actually mean?

WTF does it mean?

Tony Wright wrote this about the product guy:

It feels like product entrepreneurs are oftentimes “cowboys”. Flying by the seat of their pants, they rally a small team to build a product that people want. It’s no surprise that this is really freakin’ hard and requires a mythical combination of brute force time and effort, insight, customer empathy, and a huge pile of luck.

Here’s my take on what the product guy should do:

• Scrub & rinse new ideas
• Write the product definitions (specs & reqs)
• Create the initial version (user experience)
• Connect: Customers <> Designers <> Developers
• Own the road map
• Define and measure success

Great slides on product management basics

Here’s a much more detailed slide about the details of product management.

It seems to me that whether you’re starting your own, or joining a small startup you need to work on these skills a bit. Whether you’re a community manage, a developer, or an operation guys you need to be aware of what the “product guy” is doing. You need to have some of the skills necessary to be a good product guy because in a startup your product is so infant that everyone has a drastic effect on its’ survival. Become a product focused <insert your role here> and your startup as a whole will be much better off.

Last week Mashable ran a poll to find out which location based service YOU like the most (I say YOU because I’ve learned that the folks that read this blog are likely the type to also peruse Mashable on a regular basis). I was very please to see the result here, obviously, and I’ve been giving the battle for best location service a lot of thought. What does each service have, not have, and have the potential for?

I decided to use something that is very easy to analyze, a car, to explain what I think each service offers…or doesn’t. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Gowalla is too gamie. The feedback I’ve gotten from all of my friends who use Gowalla is that it’s so tough to figure out. There might be free iphones and tshirts hidden around town but those gimmicks fade quickly. Because of it’s overly gimmicky nature, like the PT Cruiser, I think it’s shelf life is very short. Where other services will beat Gowalla, and likely already have, is that they’re useful, they’re a service and people only play games for so long. There’s got to be user utility otherwise I’m out.

Yelps recent entrance to the location services game is on the surface appealing. They do have a lot of venues to work with but it’s clunky, not social, and ultimately not fun. Although mini vans are super effective cars, they fit kids, surf boards, Christmas trees and almost anything else, but they’re not fun to drive at all. Trust me I drove one all through high school, and although I was awesome (or so I thought), my ride was not. :) Yelp is too much on the service side, the game mechanics that other services bring to the table will win out in the end. Phin Barnes of FRC recently wrote about how gaming mechanics will be critical to all social applications in the future and this is where yelp fails, no community.

Ultimately Foursquare has the best combination of social and utility. It may not be the smoothest ride (yet), but it gets the job done better than anyone else and it’s fun, a powerful combo. The foursquare app can fit your friends and your fun into one ride. Like an SUV foursquare is enjoyable, you can be proud of what you’re driving because the community is a strong one, and your friends will think your cool :)

Although I’ve used all three of these applications, foursquare still blows the others out of the water. Yes, I’m biased (disclosure, I’m working w/ foursquare) but, I don’t see how the others are going to cross the chasm into true social utility. Because foursquare was built for that purpose from the ground up it will win.

Yesterday I had the *fun* experience of publicly being thrown under the bus. The individual inaccurately assessed a situation then cc’d numerous people on the email explaining her version of my incompetence (which was actually their incompetence, isn’t that fun). My immediate reaction was, what a bitch! But I tempered my immediate response and held off from sending any detrimental communications, email or otherwise.

This morning I approached the individual directly and said, “is there any other issue I can help you with? And, please feel free to raise concerns with me directly if you have this type of issue in the future.” I think the person realized that I was really saying, “hey don’t be a bitch next time.” Only time will tell.

Even if you don’t get through to the person who threw you under the bus, at least you can feel good about handling the situation with respect and maturity. I believe, and hope, that this approach is the best way to prevent it from happening again. If you respond bitterly, and with a short fuse, you just let them win. And nobody wants that.

image via flickr

The New York Times announced that they plan to start charging for the online content. This has been a VERY scary thing for the industry and a topic of much debate. As Fred Wilson said back in July, “the newspaper industry is doing a lot of soul searching for the right revenue model”.

So why hasn’t monetizing new content worked well to date? Why hasn’t the ‘freemium’ model worked well for the news industry like it has for so many other industries? In short the answer is, they’ve gone about it in the wrong way, and luckily it seems that NYT is learning from others mistakes. As newspaper readership migrates from print to web they’ve got to be able to monetize the move and it seems the solely advertising model has proven to be an insufficient way to monetize that content.

If a newspaper was to charge you based on how much you consume (per-article) that would be like slapping your most valued customers in the face everyday. So, they had to come up with a model that works in the opposite way… Reward the best customers, retain the exposure to search (Google juice, Bing, Tweets), and use curiosity to drive sales. I think they’ve found a way to do this through their improved ‘freemium’ model (that Financial Times, FT.com, already uses btw). It sounds like, starting in 2011, they will allow a certain amount of “free reads” per month, then after X amount of articles read (likely 10) you’ll get a pop-up asking you to pay a one time fee for unlimited reading for the rest of the month. This allows the casual reader to get their fix and it rewards the valued customers (Super User) to pay a nominal one time fee and have the ability to read like mad.

The term super user derives from computer operating systems and is used to refer to a system administrator account. This means that they have all the access rights possible or needed. This model targets and rewards they’re best customers or super users by keeping prices low relative to the amount of content consumed. Fred Wilson intuitively called this, monetizing the audience, not the content. Newspapers have got to charge something to stay alive, but they are rewarding their super users by keeping the fee minimal and one time.

I personally hope this works well because my forward thinking self :) realizes that without a model that proves profitable, the quality of the news we receive will begin its inevitable decline. I like having quality journalism on a daily basis and would pay my nominal fee for it.

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In a semi unrelated note, I heard that Amazon can charge Kindle users a dollar to subscribe to my blogs RSS feed. They’ve monetize my FREE content. Is anyone paying for this blog (or any other) via Kindle? How do you feel about doing that? Love to hear your thoughts.

image via flickr

We’re almost ready for the first, CHICAGO TECH MEETUP and I hope you’re joining us January 20th at 7pm at OfficePort for guest speaker Jason Fried (37 Signals) and presentations from local startups and entrepreneurs. Our first event was a great opportunity to socialize. This time you’ll want to bring a notepad in addition to your thirst.

A few details dates for all attending the meetup on the 20th:

An advance and sincere thank you to our sponsors: Thinklink, RackSpace, FourSquare, Sprout Box & OfficePort! (links below) We’re able to put on this great event (and many more) free of charge to our members, thanks to these folks!

We’ll be starting promptly at 7:00. To get a good seat (or, just a seat!) please arrive early. We’re at capacity. Following the keynote from Jason, we’ll take a quick break to grab food and drinks before the Startup session begins. We’re keeping the place open for plenty of socializing and drinks afterwards (where should we do the after party?), so don’t worry about fitting it all in between sessions!

I also want to thank our Panelists who have volunteered for the Startup segment. Our goal is to give the startups lots of actionable feedback, suggestions etc. (it’s not a contest by any stretch). On the panel we have Tim Courtney (SocialDevCamp), Alex Wilhelm (TheNextWeb), Mike Trotzke (Sprout Box) and Nik Rokop (Illinois Institute of Technology) – an awesome panel for anyone to be getting feedback from :) There’s also some great press in attendance (one of them rhymes with Chzech Bunch).

The four startups presenting will be WinkVid, Toy Studio, Sprout Social and Tgethr.com. I wish we could have fit everyone in, but we’ll make more room next time around.

I hope everyone is excited! I’m still blown away by the talent and enthusiasm of our members. Our membership represents a vast mix of local high-profile tech companies, startups, investors, thought leaders, bloggers, entrepreneurs and developers. Good things happen when this many talented people get together!

I’m really really pumped about our sponsors for this first event!

ThinkLinkr is the webs first, real time fully collaborative outliner!

SproutBox is a new approach to venture capital that helps entrepreneurs turn their ideas into viable businesses.

OfficePort is a creative community of entrepreneurs, freelancers and small-business owners.

Foursquare turns the city into you’re playground.

Rackspace, dedicated servers, managed hosting, and web hosting, with top notch service.

So, it appears that Google is populating suggestion searches on Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, but apparently not Islam. At first I was very skeptical of Google censoring after hearing a story on CNN, so I wanted to see if it were true on my own. Well apparently it’s true.

My only guess at why they would be doing is is that they’re trying to avoid radical Muslims calling them out for auto populating searches like “Islam is bullshit”, “Islam (terrorists)”, or other potentially offensive searches. I can understand why they’d want to avoid this but I think by being completely transparent and equal across the board they would avoid the issue with less controversy.

What do you think?

In January of this year, I decided not to do resolutions but instead to pick 12 people I wanted to meet this year. Now it’s time to grade myself, reflect on the cool people I’ve met, and look for future opportunities to meet those folks I missed.

Here’s the challenge I gave myself this year… (written on Jan 1-7, 2009)

Instead of making big New Years Resolutions for 2009 I decided last November that I would attempt to call out and meet 12 specific people in 2009. I figured those relationships would be much more valuable than any half ass’d resolution. So, over the last few months, up to the night that I posted this I worked to identify 12 people that I respect and could learn the most from, so here they are. If you’re on the list, please contact me…we’ll be in touch.

So, let’s go through the list and see how I did…

Gary Vaynerchuk, WLTV, NYC

I did it! Gary had an event in Chicago after the launch of his book ‘Crush It’ and we met, check out this vide0 (and pic above)

Nate Westhiemer, Rose Tech Ventures, NYC

missed, but I’m headed to NYC next week and hoping to connect then.

A.J. Jacobs, Author ‘The Year of Living Biblically‘, NYC

I did it! And meeting AJ was one of the highlights of this list, check out these posts about meeting AJ.

“Back in March of this year I made it out to New York City and I had the pleasure of meeting AJ Jacobs for a drink, well a coffee and we met at a vegetarian joint called Blossom. At the time I was planning to write a book (delayed, not canceled) and his advice was remarkable. During our conversation in NYC’s upper west side, AJ was the most humble and encouraging person I’ve met. He was willing to help out with my book and anything else he could. AJ was a true pleasure to be with.”

Loic Lemeur, Seesmic, SF

missed, I was only able to get to SF once this year and unfortunately Loic was in FR.

Jason Fried, 37signals, Chicago

missed, however I’m hosting the first Chicago Tech Meetup on January 20th and Jason is speaking. I’m really looking forward to meeting him there. After reading the 37Signals book, ‘Getting Real‘, I have an incredible respect for Jason and won’t miss their next book ‘Rework‘.

Daniel Debow, Rypple, Canada

I did it! Daniel and I met in Chicago when he was here for a conference, he’s an awesome dude building a really cool startup. Also, Daniel was super helpful in introducing me to Jay Goldman and Dennis Crowley. Daniel has always been a great encouragement and given me really solid advice about startups and career stuff, meet him if you can.

Walt Ribeiro, The Internet’s Music Teacher, Philly

missed, I never got to Philly and Walt has been busy with the amazing ForOrchestra, check it out.

Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot, Boston

missed, I never had an opportunities to meet Darmesh this year, but I have followed the wild growth of HubSpot and continue to read his very helpful startup blog, OnStartups.

Mike Volpe, Hubspot, Boston

missed, however a good friend of mine in contemplating a role with HubSpot and reported that Mike was as awesome as I had thought.

Fraser Kelton, AdaptiveBlue, NYC

missed, although we’ve spoken on the phone many times, we never met in 2009. However I think I’ll be spending a bit of time in NYC this coming year and fully expect to make this happen. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed helping Fraser with feedback on GetGlue. They’ve turned a cool technology into a very useful tool for content sharing and discovery.

Dan Patterson, ABC News & Creepy Sleepy, NYC

missed, never really had an opportunity to meetup with Dan, although his work is still very fascinating to me.

YOU…

I got to meet SO MANY people this year and it’s all because of Twitter and making web connection real offline, a practice I fully intend to continue through 2010. So including “you” I’ve met 5 of 12. Not as good as I thought, but a solid start. If you were going to do this in 2010 who would be on your list?

Most people know that Google’s precious search algorithm is a secret, sacred, thing that they’ve worked very hard to protect. In fact their behavior around that algorithm has been similar to Golum’s behavior towards his “precious” ring. You know, the one that will ‘rule them all’. This algorithm and others allow Google to provide very focused advertising based on your search terms.

In computing, an algorithm is an effective method for solving a problem using a finite sequence of instructions.

However, the way I see it, their dominance in providing web advertising using the “precious”, all machine, set of instruction won’t last forever. There are human powered systems that can adjust quickly for variables, change over time, and become increasingly “sharp” as they learn. Simply, they can learn better than just a computer. A great example of this type of human powered system is a NYC based startup Hunch. Effectively, they’ve created a system where they can collect an infinite number of decision trees, all generated by humans, and then predict future decisions based on passed decision sequences.

So, what am I getting at? Well, as you know I’ve been working closely in the local advertising space through my work with Foursquare and I can’t stop thinking about how large of an opportunity this is. If a bar or restaurant can advertise directly to the folks driving by as they’re deciding where to eat, that’s better than any billboard, radio spot, newspaper clip, full page magazine add, event sponsorship, Adsense ad in my Gmail or Google search, and I could go on… It’s simply the best possible advert you could get, as an advertiser or a consumer, unless I’m missing something. Here’s an example, when companies spend money on other ‘focused’ internet advertising they pay for say 100 impressions. This means that 100 people saw that ad, and the common click-through rate is about 1/100, even on the ‘focused’ ads. Now, what if you were able to directly reach potential customers who frequent your ‘type’ of establishment, fall within a very specific demographic, and only if they’re walking distance from your location!!! Right now you’re saying, “WTF are you serious…”, and I am.

With the blowing up of location based services like Foursquare, Loopt, Brightkite and a few others, this sort of data is readily available. People are using these services to share their location, their purchase preferences, their unfiltered thoughts about almost everything they do and businesses can learn A LOT from that. Now you see why all these nerds (me) get excited about data; because you can change the world with it. With this data you can turn industries upside down, and the ability to reach consumers in this intimate way is one of those opportunities.

It’s all a matter of who can reach the masses, who can create a product intuitive enough for “Joe the Plumber” to use. Google’s Adsense technology is fairly simple, but still local businesses don’t use it. The potential for human powered mobile, local, advertising is in the words of Austin Powers, “dead sexy”. My mouth is literally watering. I can’t wait to be a part of this movement.

Update: This post is going to be syndicated, and I made some additions/updates for that reason. 1/5/10