Good news/bad news...

Ok so the Austin Statesman ran a great article about us tonight.  (Thanks!)  One small problem - the original article featured a pic of someone other than, uh, me (see pic above).  Who is it? Do you know? One thing is certain - it wasn't me!

For the record, this is me:

Note: As i mentioned in the article, we are super excited about Deals.com.  Look for big changes coming soon!

Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp, Sept 2009)

Two days, two slide shows......

Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp, Sept 2009)

View more documents from Dave McClure.

(Tip of the hat to Fred Wilson)

Netflix Culture

To be honest, I'm not sure I believe 100% this, but either way, its very interesting....

Culture

View more presentations from Reed Hastings.

Wii

So yesterday, I was talking to a new friend in Austin. We were at lunch chatting away when the following occurred....

He said he recently played "disc golf."

I said, "I like that too - as a matter of fact, my son and I played just yesterday!"

"Cool," he said. "Where did you guys play?"

"At home, on the Wii!" I replied. He smiled.

At which time I realized he was referring to actually going outside, standing in the fresh air, getting a little exercise, sweating a bit (a lot these days) and throwing the Frisbee, while I was referring to the "sport" of sitting in the Lay-z-boy and twitching your wrist.

"Love disc golf..." I mumbled, while making a mental note that the Wii aint real......

Signup for Fantasy Football!!!

 

 

 

Ballet 2009

 

Favorite Tweet Yet....

""I am somewhat disappointed that my 15 minutes of fame stem from running into a tree whilst tweeting..."

From: Man Twitters and is attacked by tree

Why Crowd Sourcing Blows in Stock Picking

Cake Financial lets you see what others are buying and selling. But the signals are a bit, um, cloudy this week (and most weeks as far as I can tell).

So are you supposed to buy or sell these stocks?

The Quick Click

I have been a manager at Internet-related companies since 1995. In that time, our companies have always had some form of Internet access available to employees.

As a manager, I have learned there are at least three main ways for colleagues to hide surfing somewhere you shouldn't on company time. The first is the most obvious - obstructing the screen, either with something - work papers, a coffee cup or, if all else fails, themselves. The second most popular way is the distractor, who when confronted with personal things on their screen, deflects all eyes elsewhere. "Hey, is that guy holding a bow and arrow?!? No?"

The best way is the old quick click - minimizing the screen or flipping to another to avoid detection. If executed well, it is almost undetectable. Except you have to move your hand.

I have had more than one employee over the years who every time I walked into their office/cube, they felt the need to quick click.

I am a trusting guy, but if you have to stop doing something personal every time i walk past you, pretty soon I think I will begin to believe you aren't doing much at work.... And I suspect that is a slippery slope.

So, don't quick click every time. Sometimes, just leave the page up as it is. It is less suspicious, than the quick click, I promise! (or you could quit surfing so much at work and just work more!)

Superbowl Fun

I saw a picture of a Twinkie-based Superbowl snack er, bowl....

We had to try one. Here is our effort. Broccoli v. Cauliflower.

It was quite fun to build! (5 boxes of Twinkies!)

My Toyota is more "American" than your Ford?

I was raised to "buy American." (I'm from Arkansas, so when I say it, its "Uh-mare-i-can" but....) Chevy trucks, Levi jeans, McDonald's burgers. No Honda's in our driveway!

Except now, in the modern global economy, deciding what is American and what isn't has gotten harder. Much harder.

Case in point - my current car - a Toyota Sequoia vs. my previous car, a Ford Expedtion.

Most people would say Ford is the American car, Toyota isn't. You would be wrong. Sort of. Maybe.

According to the NHTSA (in this report), my Sequoia is 80% of the "content" was made in the US/Canada and it is assembled in the US/Canada (According to AOL, they are assembled in Princeton, Indiana). My Expo was made in the US, too, but with only 70% of the content from the US.

So is my Toyota more American because of its content? Or less because of the HQ? Interesting questions!

A great article in the WSJ goes into some detail on this topic...

Do Publisher's Care What Ads They Run?

Caveat Emptor!

In my opinion, this is the rule most publishers live by. If an ad seems dicey or silly (or a total rip-off), hey, buyer beware, baby!

Take the IQ ads you see everywhere these days -

Avg Sooners Fan’s IQ=114
Are You Smarter Than The Oklahoma
Sooners Fan? Take The IQ Quiz Now!

Or this one

Brett Farve's IQ = 136
Are you Smarter than Brett? Take the IQ Quiz Now!
www.NFL-IQ-Quizes.com

Are we to believe that Brett took this IQ test? And then agreed to let his IQ be published? And he, in-turn, somehow endorses or quasi-endorses this service, which in return for telling you your IQ, charges you over $9/mo ongoing on T-mobile for "trivia services"?

I doubt it.

Yet these are all over Sports Illustrated's Website.

I am a sport's fan, love SI and have noticed the ads - are you telling me they haven't?

I think that taking the money and turning your head is a short-term win. I assume big brands like Sports Illustrated fiqure times are hard and they can weather the storm..... (other sites have these ads too,including arch-rival ESPN.com)

I would try harder I think.

Emails to IQ Quizes and SI were not answered.

Marriage calculations

Today we are launching a fascinating marriage calculator. Based on the work of a Wharton professor using US Census data,it allows users to see the current (and historical) divorce rates for people that statistically "look like them." In addition, it estimates the divorce rate for your peer group over the next 5 years.

I am fascinated by demographics. Play around with the calculator a bit and you will see big swings in the results based on age and education.

My own numbers are as follows: My peer group has a 22% divorce rate and I have a 5% chance of divorcing in the next 5 years.

My wife's numbers are 17% with a 5% chance of divorcing. Five percent is about average in terms of our chances over the next 5 years. Hey, we are average!!!

You can also go back in time - for example, I have a friend who married very young. If I calculate his "score" five years into his marriage, at that time he had an 18% chance of getting divorced in the next 5 years and about 10% of people like him had already divorced. Tough odds. Unfortunately, my friend divorced in his fifth year of marriage as well.

Is it time to move all-in to CDs?

Ugh.

If you believe it is "always darkest just before the dawn," then the stock market is clearly close to a sunrise. It has been a brutal few months,with many mutual funds down 30$ to 45% for the year!!! To lose almost one-half of your value in a short period of time sounds brutal - and it has been for me anyway.

I know that rationally, I shouldn't even look at my 401(k), as I am years from retirement, but I can't help myself, It is depressing!

After years at Bankrate, I know a bit about CDs - perhaps I should just dump my savings into them! 4.5% sounds terrible,until you compare it to -40%!!!

This blog on CDs and investing had a depressing poll - Where is the economy going in 2010? I gotta be honest,I selected "I believe unemployment will increase, the stock market will fall further and we will approach a depression."

Ugh!!

Usually, when things lookthe bleakest, that is the time to buy. When is that? Now,or a year from now?

What nationality is Wal*Mart?

So I own a Toyota. Toyota is headquartered in Japan,yet it has a substantial US presence.

from Wikipedia:

United States employees and investments
Toyota directly employed around 34,675 people in the United States, invested USD $15.5 billion, produced 1.2 million vehicles using US and foreign auto parts, sold 2.54 million vehicles, and donated USD $340 million to nonprofits. [34] It has in total 10 plants, USD $2.9 billion per year payroll, purchased USD $28 billion in parts and supplies from 30 states. It created around 386,000 jobs in the United States as result of Toyota's spending and demand from suppliers.

But most people wouldn't consider it a "US" company - would you?

Bill Bishop wrote the following about traditional "US" companies rooting for the Chinese Olympic teams

No ‘Home Team’ For U.S. multinationals
Many U.S. multinationals have a big presence in Beijing. Some, like Coca-Cola (see an earlier post on their Beijing Olympic market efforts here and McDonald’s, are Olympics sponsors.

While from a business perspective I understand why they are doing it, as an American I find viscerally strange to see U.S. corporate icons rooting for the Chinese team. McDonald’s is running ads with the slogan “Cheering for the Chinese team 24 hours a day,” and in at least one Beijing Wal-Mart (not an Olympic sponsor) employees wear shirts with slogans supporting the Chinese team.

What these companies are doing is necessary to be successful in the China market. But it does, to me at least, bring home the point that at least some of these American corporate icons don’t seem to have a home team anymore.

Feeling lonely?

Feeling lonely? Don't talk to enough people during the day? Wish more people called you?

Start a business.

We get 5-7 telemarketing calls a day. All of them ask/whine/beg/demand to talk to the owner. At first I (innocently) took most of them (we are a small company, no "screening" here!).

They almost always want to sell us something we don't need - a satellite dish for TV (we are a business?), credit card processing (it took too much time getting our current one to work) or Miami Heat tickets (if cold calling a tiny Internet company 90 miles from Miami is your best sales lead, I wish I could short the Heat...).

Once a month a collector calls, looking for Mrs X - apparently someone had this number and several companies would really like to speak with her. They never believe that this is a business phone now, apparently pretending that the number changed is a common scam (really? amazing!).

My current favorite call comes from AT&T. The caller ID always says "Provo UT - (801) 221-2893" or similar (I am from the rural south and sound like it, so I can never speak ill about someones accent, but it seems safe to say the callers don't sound like they are calling from Utah, a state I have spent much time in). When you answer, there is always a telltale pause, as some gremlin / outbound dialing machine connects your live voice to someone in a huge telemarketing center... "My I speak to the owner? this is X from AT&T." He tries to sell us some modification to our phone service, which we don't need and don't want. I always ask him to take me off of the calling list, at which point he/she hangs up on me. The number is always disconnected if you try a call back. This is annoying.

Is it really AT&T? Who knows? They clearly say they are. Perhaps is is some rogue vendor. If it is AT&T, the people charged with monitoring their outbound sales efforts suck at their jobs.

We are going to stop answering these calls.

If you are selling a product via the phone, I would be looking (hard) for a new delivery mechanism. You may have the greatest product in the world, but you can't sell it if people don't answer. I believe that day is coming... The bad guys are winning.

The Sushi Nazi(s)

I'll show my country-bumpkin ways by howling at this article in the WSJ today - Sushi Bullies.

My favorite part, this series of quotes

Geri-Ayn Gaul had her first encounter with a raw-fish autocrat in August at Ino, in San Francisco. First, she tried to add some soy sauce to her seaweed salad. Big mistake. Chef Noboru Inoue scolded her, she says, telling her, "No, no, no. No soy sauce!" Then, she had the temerity to scrape some wasabi off a piece of sushi, because she doesn't like spicy food. The chef's response, she says: "'No. It needs the wasabi.'" She obeyed, and choked down the fish.

"I was so nervous, I spilled my miso soup," says Ms. Gaul, whose meal for two, with no alcohol, cost $75 -- before tip.


So, let me get this straight. You Geri-Ayn are the customer. You know you don't like wasabi. Yet because you are "ordered" to do so by the chef, you choke it down and pay $75 for the privilege?

Is it just me, or is this some version of "the chef has no clothes?" I understand that the chef is an expert and we should possibly defer to them, but at all times and in all ways? This is silly.

Would you buy - and wear - something you hate just because the designer told you to? Would you buy an ugly house because the architect said to?

This is 100% about being in the club, the hazing is the price you pay to get into the fraternity. It has nothing to do with food, everything to do with feeling like you belong.

Which is ok. I may have to go next time I'm in California. I like to belong too!