Tag: saas

What Happened at MIX

by jcafesin, posted in lean startup, startup, startups

Why Tech WON’T Fix Your Business

A while back, a friend asked me what I thought about him taking a job offer at MIX.

“They’re the reboot of StumbledUpon,” he’d told me. “They want me to improve their recommendation engine, to keep the users they have with better recs, and to get new users by recommending them ‘better’ content.”

Hmm…MIX is a failing content curation platform started by Garrett Camp, co-founder of Uber.It has no valuable differentiators from Instagram or Pinterest, or even the dopamine rush of StumbleUpon’s random discovery model known as ‘intermittent reinforcement’— the most addictive reward system known in behavioral psychology.

“This is yet another startup looking for you to save them with tech,” I told him. He’d been down this road many times. As a seasoned data scientist, failing businesses reach out to his ML, NLP, and AI programming background, looking for him to come in and fix them—code collaborative filters and recommendation algorithms that will attract and retain users. But an AI rec engine isn’t going to fix MIX.

“Their platform is a marketing play,” I told my friend before he accepted the position. “This isn’t a tech fix. StumbledUpon at least was unique in its random “stumble” feature that made the site successful. Now MIX is trying to play catch up as just another content curation site. They need to continually come up with solid differentiators to attract users away from competitors, and tightly targeted ad campaigns to brand and sell their ever evolving unique features. And all that’s marketing.”

“A better rec engine could attract and keep users,” my wide-eyed developer assured me, stroked from landing the gig.

“What does a ‘better rec engine’ even mean? MIX can’t recommend content it doesn’t have. Neither can any other platform. Netflix rec engine sucks because they can only recommend movies in their library—content they have the rights to stream—and there are rarely any in their collection I’d like to see that I haven’t seen already.”

My friend glared at me because he was one of the original developers of Netflix’s rec engine. But he didn’t dispute the accuracy of my assertion.

“You asked me what I thought about you working for MIX, and I think it’s a bad idea. Job won’t last a year unless Garrett figures out he needs marketing now, not blowing capital on tech. I guarantee you, MIX needs campaigns that show unique benefits to attract users because they need content, and only when they have a lot of it will they then need you.”

Six weeks after my friend was hired, he was fired, along with the entire rec team. Bleeding cash from AI developer salaries, equipment and servers, Garrett was right to do so, even though he’d authorized every job req for his team of data science engineers. They were shocked to be abruptly terminated, as was an H1B employee, who, suddenly unemployed, found himself at risk of being deported back to India.

MIX has never had the reach that Instagram has, nor the communities Reddit, LinkedIn, or Facebook have built. They don’t need an AI correlation/recommendation engine at this point in their development. Almost a decade into MIX’s launch, they still don’t have enough users or sticky content to garner retention or quality affiliate advertisers.

Garrett Camp, the CEO, should have seen all of this coming had he been performing weekly competitive analysis, but his background is data science. He thinks, like so many developers, that all business problems can be solved with more tech. He got lucky with StumbledUpon, launched in 2002, the same time Google was getting popular. He got funding from Accel, one of the biggest VC firms in the Valley, which launched his trajectory into the entrepreneurial community.

StumbledUpon did not innovate, up their game with unique horizontal or vertical features, benefits, or new offerings. A few months after it launched, I got on it for a year or two, until Google provided the search results I wanted. MIX’s value became nominal, so I stopped using it. My behavior is typical. Retention, and sustained growth are continuous hurdles for most SaaS offerings.

StumbledUpon integrated Garrett into the startup and VC communities, which propelled him to his next, now infamous startup, Uber. And Garrett designed and built the first prototype UberCab, but he wasn’t the guy who made it a unicorn. That was Travis Kalanick, his co-founder. Travis studied coding in college but wasn’t a coder. He was a business guy, a salesman—the #1 job of a [good] CEO. Out of nine startups Garrett founded to date, all but Uber, and Eco (pivoted) have collapsed. This is typical for engineer-founded and run startups, which is likely why he gave job recs for engineers, instead of building out a pro-marketing team for MIX. Garrett clearly needs another Travis to achieve sustained startup success, or one hell of a marketing team for his content curation platform.

As of this writing, MIX is currently hanging on by a thread, experiencing a significant, multi-year decline in active users and traffic. To avoid becoming among the 90+% of startups that fail, MIX is going to need many users producing ‘quality’—sticky (as in funny, cute, informative, visually arresting, interactive)—content. And to get these users to their site, then get them excited to join, and stay engage on the platform, is NOT a tech fix. It’s a marketing play! Garrett must put a marketing foundation under MIX, go back to the beginning of the marketing process to propel his startup into a thriving, sustainable business.

PRODUCTIZATION (1st phase of the marketing process) of MIX:

  1. Identify Features and Benefits of MIX.
  2. Find and Profile Target Markets and Users.
  3. Discover Competitors.
  4. Identify and/or Create uniquely valuable Differentiators.
  5. Develop Horizontals and Verticals for a pipeline of new releases.

R.I.P. Information Hwy

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Your phone is a tool you’re using, or a tool that’s using you…

I’m watching The Politician on Netflix while working out. The scene is on a teen and mom in their kitchen, arguing about which state senator to vote for in the upcoming New York election.

Teen is a first-time voter, just 18. She’s going to vote for the 24-yr old male candidate on the Green ticket, running solely on the climate platform, with no political or real work experience. She’s disgusted with the middle-age female incumbent, virtually unchallenged in every election the last 20 yrs, until now.

“Boomer,” the teen mocks her mother’s choice of the older incumbent. “The world is gonna end in 10 years, Mom.”

“I am barely a boomer, okay?” the mom defends. “So don’t throw that shit at me,” she says. “And the world is not going to end in 10 years, Jayne!” She starts listing all she does for her daughter — the vegan cooking, the composting, and even the hyper-vigilant recycling her child insists on. “And still, I’m the problem, according to you.”

“Not you, Mom. People your age.”

Watching this scene unfold, I feel my body tense as I run on the machine. I AM her mother’s age.

“Let me tell ya something, Jayne. People your age think you know everything and you are fucking naive. When I was your age, I thought I knew everything too.”

“We’re not naive, Mom. We’re informed. You had, what, like two newspapers, three networks. I’ve got a SUPERCOMPUTER in my pocket.”

She is, of course, referring to her cellphone, and, in fact, showing me how naive this teen really is.

Unfortunately, Mom didn’t come back at Jayne. Mom doesn’t know (nor the writers of the show apparently) that the SUPERCOMPUTER in both their pockets, well, isn’t informing them of anything but what they already believe, and about things they likely want. So, in effect, it is MANIPULATING this ignorant, yet rather arrogant child, (and many others) into believing they have a SUPERCOMPUTER in their cellphone.

The cellphone you all carry around, (as I don’t have a smartphone, so really, it is all of you), isn’t INFORMING you, it’s ‘recommending’ you read, watch, buy, and even think about what advertisers on the internet want you to.

Today’s internet is NOT unlimited access to unfettered information like the world wide web once was. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything through any Search engine that hasn’t been filtered through a rec system which parameters have been defined by the data you (or others like you) have willingly given.

The Netflix documentary The Great Hack makes it clear the SUPERCOMPUTER in your pocket is manipulating you, and millions like you to believe in lies through the endless onslaught of personalized advertising. Throw enough shit against a wall and some of it will stick. Russia paid Google, Facebook, Insta…etc. fortunes in ad campaigns pushing the conservative Republican agenda to get Trump elected. Twice.

The internet is now a MARKETING ENGINE to make media platforms and SaaS apps money. The cellphone, tablet, laptop you’re using has become proficient at USING YOU. Every time you log onto Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, ChatGPT, Google, they ‘scrape’ your posts, simultaneously putting ‘cookies’ on your device to follow you wherever you go on the net, and in real life.

Your mobile has an accelerometer in it tracking how fast you’re moving (so your car insurance knows how often you’re over the speed limit). GPS informs Google, Verizon, and their like where you are on the planet, revealing typical behavior patterns like when and where you shop.

Your pocket SUPERCOMPUTER collects who you talk to, what you say, what you read, watch, and frequently visit. Most every online interaction is ‘data mined.’ Trillions of posts, texts, IMs, searches, online (and in-store) credit card purchases are continually collected, stored and analyzed. Retail knows how much you make by how much you spend, and charges you more the more you make, or if your address is Beverly Hills. Not a conspiracy theory. It’s called dynamic personalized pricing.

Watching The Politician, Jayne’s mother doesn’t seem to get any of this. I’m deep into the second season and mom’s as addicted to her cellphone as her daughter. Jayne doesn’t want to believe she’s being exploited, or doesn’t really care if it’s true. She gives her data away freely, every time she signs onto the internet. She clicks, “I AGREE,” and never bothers reading the disclaimers.

Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Process (NLP), Deep Learning, AI (LLMs, LAMs, AGIs), are all software processes used to analyze then correlate BIG DATA for patterns of behavior.

COLLABORATIVE FILTERS [à la] Wikipedia:

Collaborative filtering is a method of making automatic predictions (filtering) about the interests of a user by collecting preferences or taste information from many users (collaborating).

In other words, gathering and filtering your data from the net tells Amazon, Google and Instagram what you (and those like you) will likely buy, or what rhetoric you’ll likely buy into — believe in. Then these platforms slam you with marketing targeted AT You, NOT “For You.” They want to SELL YOU offerings and ideas supported by their affiliate marketers (like Republicans, and Russia).

Google Search prioritizes Search results by businesses that buy the most ad space on their platforms. Corps spending millions dominate the digital ad space, skewing response results for smaller businesses.

I used to get many pages of returns on any given Search a decade ago. Not anymore. Google will not give you information that they feel you don’t need (and won’t serve their agenda), based on your internet and ‘SUPERCOMPUTER’ cellphone activity and history.

My GenZ daughter and her friends are on the same page as Jayne in The Politician. They’re simply ignorant of what they’re addicted to — how their phones are manipulating them to THINK, FEEL and ACT. She is SURE that “no one is manipulating me, Mom!” She “knows” when she’s being hit with ads, and she just “ignores them.”

I call BULLSHIT.

We can’t ignore what we don’t even know is happening while we’re IMing through Instagram on our mobile.

Just IMAGINE my friend Mary’s experience:

Mary is IMing a good friend on Insta, whining about her marriage.

Instagram’s algorithms are scraping her and her friend’s IM for SENTIMENT ANALYSIS to find out where Mary might be vulnerable to purchase something…anything really, as Insta has advertisers that sell just about anything.

The next ad Mary sees on her mobile is for a singles dating site. The ad is targeted at divorcees, showing an older woman having fun with a stunning man, and the copy says, “Your last chance at true love.” In a few short sentences, the copy describes the relationship you’ll find on their site like a Cinderella story.

A while later, Mary goes on to Facebook, and YouTube, and the next series of ads she sees vacillate from singles dating sites to divorce lawyers. These ads, and recommendations for movies, articles, blogs, posts about dating after divorce…etc. appear in her email, and in her social feeds, and most everywhere she goes online.

Mary never mentioned divorcing her husband when IMing her friend. She’d not even thought of it, really. In fact, she’s frequently sounded off about her marriage to friends through IM, as many women do. And it isn’t the first time Mary has gotten these dating and lawyer ads. It’s been going on a long time now, one ad after the other every time she even posts a back-handed joke about marriage in general. And after this last fight with her husband, well, like the ads keep saying, Mary deserves more! Like the ads say, she can find someone better than her husband. And like the ads say, a divorce will, “Open her life to the possible!”

These ads appear whenever Mary is expressing her frustration with her marriage. (Marketing is an iterative process.) And instead of looking to make it work with her husband, after a while all Mary wants to do is divorce and ‘open her life up to new possibilities.’

To Instagram, Mary’s divorce is a WIN! Their algorithms and the engineers who code them don’t care they’ve torn apart a family, for their profit. The software did its job and rewarded their advertisers. Some lawyer who advertises on their site just got themselves a client. Some dating app that spends millions annually in affiliate marketing on their platform just got a new subscriber. Multiply that with the hundreds of thousands of businesses doing affiliate marketing on the net, and you have, well, today’s internet.

NOT a SUPERCOMPUTER. And no longer, “The Information Highway.” But simply a marketing tool in which YOU are the PRODUCT of your online experience.

How to Raise a Genius

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Went to the Jelly Belly Factory on a field trip with my daughter’s 2nd grade class. The young man assigned to escort us on the tour misquoted a brilliant saying by one of my favorite icons.

The guide delivered his canned speech, spoke of how long and complex the process to make even one single jelly bean, but that nothing great ever came easily, “as the inventor, Thomas Edison said: ‘Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.’”

But that is NOT what Tom said. He said, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

So what is my issue with the mere 9% our tour guide misquoted?

Mr. Thomas Alva Edison was trying to tell us that to get good (‘genius’) at ANYTHING takes HARD WORK (‘perspiration’), and a lot of it. He should know. It took him, and an educated team of men many years and over 5,000 exploded glass bulbs to invent the light bulb.

Still, you say, it’s only 9%. The 8 year old’s the tour guide was talking to didn’t even know what “percent” meant. And while this may be true, there were 15 adults with the pack of 40 kids the guide was leading. And the parents understood. Most had probably never heard the quote before. It is somewhat obscure, which is a shame because it is an astounding insight. What the tour guide misquoted did not communicate the gravity of Mr. Edison’s meaning.

In the beginning of the 4th grade our son failed several math tests in a row, and upon inquire we found he didn’t understand the material. When asked why he hadn’t asked for help from either his teacher or us, he confessed he felt afraid he’d look dumb. Having always done fairly well in math, when he got lost, he felt too stupid to ask for help. He was supposed to be smart, but maybe he wasn’t, he cried, clearly shamed.

I hugged him, held him, and reminded him of old Tom’s saying for the hundredth time. Then my husband and I got to work, played tag team, alternating afternoons, evenings and weekends to teach our son what he needed to know. Within three months of daily math lessons he not only grasped the material presented but excelled to the top of Math Swap in his grade level and remained there through elementary school.

Our son now loves math. It’s his favorite subject. He works hard at it and that hard work just placed him in the most advanced math class at his new middle-school. Failing those math tests in the 4th grade turned into a great education for all of us. We got to see directly how hard work pays off. And though our son may not always tow the line of excellence, he now knows that ‘smart’ is not given, but earned.

The New York Times Magazine had an article a while back on ‘genius.’ It sited Anders Ericsson’s research on The Making of an Expert, which concluded ‘genius’ wasn’t born, as previously thought, but made.

“Outstanding performance is the product of years of deliberate practice, not any innate talent or skill,” according to K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely.

Most everyone starts out with the 1% inspiration. It comes with being human, and our ability to think abstractly.

Few of us have the tenacity, or the determination to endure failure after failure and continue through that last 5-10% it takes to achieve excellence. Most of us settle on gawking at greatness instead of pursuing it.

So, the question is not, ‘What is genius,’ or even excellence, but what motivates persistence?

Achieving good grades, or becoming a killer guitar player, or great at soccer, or even parenting, takes “deliberate practice.” We need to impart Tom’s wisdom to our children, teach them by example, with unwavering diligence, that reaching their potential can not be achieved blowing most of the day binge watching Netflix, or YouTube, or gaming. To actualize ‘greatness’ means devoting the 99% perspiration— the time, energy and effort necessary to create anything of lasting value. Whether it be a school report, a science project or a math test, genius is not only doable for most every child, but for all of us with hard work and persistence.