Are You a Connector? Earn an iPod Shuffle!

GetQuik is making a call-out to you connectors out there. If you have read "The Tipping Point" by Malcom Gladwell or "never eat alone" by Keith Ferrazzi, you will have heard of these terms.

Here is the challenge. Starting from today - April 30th, 2007, the first 10 people to successfully refer 10 new GetQuik members will earn an iPod Shuffle http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/.

How it works: In order to "refer a friend" into the GetQuik network, you must first be a registered GetQuik user. Go to www.GetQuik.com and sign up. Once you are signed up, you can use the "Refer a Friend" link to invite your friends (for a video tutorial, go to http://www.getquik.com/RunTime/Common/Demo.aspx). Once 10 of your friends have successfully registered, we will send you out an iPod Shuffle.

We are still looking for our "Tipping Point" and experimenting with ways to make it happen. If you have any questions about this promotion, please email support@GetQuik.com.

Skip Amazon - Use BookFlix

How many books do you read more than one time? How much does an average paperback book cost - $8-$10?

Imagine being about to read 20 books for the price of one? Books that you want to read. I have become a huge fan of the public library. I can go online to the Sunnyvale Public Library and select from a huge selection of books. I can reserve a book for $.50. No need to worry about whether the book is checked out or not. Once my book comes in, I get an email notification. Need more than the 3 weeks to finish your book? Simply go online and renew your book.

Seriously, libraries have some of the coolest technology available. Besides reserving a book or renewing a book online, you can also self-service your own check-out. They currently use a bar-code reader, but hopefully our libraries will upgrade to RFID technology so those fussy readers will be less of an issue. I think Amazon is great, but I love my library. I currently have 4 books on hold with Sunnyvale, so I gotta get my read on. I am currently reading "never eat alone" by Keith Ferrazzi. Great book. I actually ordered a few copies from Amazon to give away to some friends. So Amazon is still getting some of my money after all.

Your American Admin - Sanjaya

Happy American Admin Day,
To all the hard working admins who keep their groups and executives on time and producing, thank you.
A few weeks back, we published a contest in this blog asking for candidates for an American Admin contest. The results are in, and the results show that we need to figure out how to run a more effective contest. Yes, our $250 bonus prize went uncontested. Therefore, we have elected to offer up the prize to America's favorite American Idol reject, Sanjaya.
We just need Sanjaya to email us at support@getquik.com and provide us with his valid email account in order that we can reward him his prize. So if you are out there Sanjaya, congratulations on your victory.

Happy is the Fair-Weather Fan

The trouble with being a die-hard sports fan, is that the numbers are against you. There can only be one SuperBowl champion and one World Series victor. If you are a Chicago Cubs season-ticket holder; or worse, a Buffalo Bills fan, you have gone through some dark days (Scott Norwood and 5 SuperBowl loses).

This weekend in the Bay Area has been a great week if you are a bandwagon jumper. The Golden State Warriors have made the playoffs for the first time in 13 years. They lead the mighty Dallas Mavericks (1-0) in a best of 7 first round playoff series. The Sharks have moved on to the 2nd round in the Stanley Cup playoffs. The San Francisco Giants are on a 5 game win streak. The sun is shining and the teal hockey jerseys are out.

In my younger days, I would rage about these so-called fans who came out of the woodworks when a potential championship was approaching. Most of these playoff runs don't conclude with a championship (the San Francisco Giants 2002 World Series loss was particularly painful). As soon as the Sharks, Raiders, A's, Giants, (insert your team name here) gets bumped from the playoffs, gone are the jerseys and these fair-weather fans proceed with their lives without missing a beat. Where is the sorry, anguish, tears and anger?

Now that I don't have time to devote to my favorite sports teams (except for the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco Giants), I see the wisdom of the "fair-weather fan" strategy. I get the upside if the Sharks win the Cup, but none of the downside if they get eliminated along the way. There are more important things in live than who wins the NBA Championship or Stanley Cup after all. The Steelers 2005-2006 victory didn't hurt with this new-found attitude. Now if only the Giants could win the World Series, then life would be perfect (old habits die hard).

Pizza My Heart - Winning Customers One T-Shirt At a Time

I had an opportunity to speak with the "Big Cheese" from Pizza My Heart - Chuck Hammers a few months back. Pizza My Heart is a Bay Area favorite (12 locations, soon to be 13) for pizza by the slice.

One thing that Pizza My Heart is well known for is their t-shirt deal. You can get a slice of pizza, a soda and a t-shirt for $5! If you are relaxing downtown in Santa Cruz, Palo Alto or Los Gatos; there is a high likelihood that you will see someone wearing one of these shirts. All told, they have sold 425,000 shirts and counting. Pizza My Heart sells so many of these shirts annually, that this meal/t-shirt deal is no longer a loss leader. You can get t-shirts seriously cheap if you buy in bulk. You can bet the original goal of the t-shirt promotion was not to make a quick buck, but rather to create brand awareness and customer loyalty. This campaign has achieves this desired result and then some. Pizza My Heart is not the only pizza by the slice option in the Bay Area, but it is the best known. Pizza My Heart focuses on a quality product, premiere locations, and the t-shirt promotion. Unlike other pizza shops, they hardly do any coupons or print advertising. Having a cute baby or a cute babe wearing your logo can be a powerful brand building strategy.

In the spirit of Chuck Hammer's brilliant campaign, if you are a registered GetQuik customer and would like one of our t-shirts (lime green), email support@getquik.com with your mailing address and GetQuik user name. We will send you a t-shirt (M, L, XL).

I Left my Heart in New York City?

Now that the tech bust is a fading memory, the San Franciso Bay Area has reemerged from the ashes to challenge New York as the most important city/region in the United States.

New York has 3 primary assets that have kept them head and shoulders above the other major cities.

1) Wall Street (the financial center of the world)
2) Huge Dense Population
3) News Media (NY Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.)

Wall Street is rocking again. Private equity and hedge funds are the decade's financial heroes (similar to the Sand Hill VC's in the 90's).

So with NY are hot as it is, why is San Francisco a threat to take over NY in importance?

To paraphrase James Carville, "It's the technology, stupid." The power of blogs and real-time breaking news (particularly in technology) is being driven from San Francisco. Michael Arrington's TechCrunch and Om Mallik's GigaOM are getting the scoops on the latest tech deals and breaking news. Also, TechCrunch and GigaOM are the new launching pads for exciting new technology companies.

User generated sites like digg are providing news consumers with an alternative to the traditional news channels. Google and Yahoo! are providing a way for advertisers to go direct to consumers versus Madision Avenue ad agencies. Young adults are spending more time on YouTube, MySpace (Southern California), and FaceBook than the 500 channels on TV.

To use a sports analogy, NY has the power and experience (see also money and history), while upstart San Francisco has the speed and finesse (technology and innovation). Now if only the Giants can beat the Yankees in the World Series - Peter MacGowan, are you reading this?

Go Chicken, Egg Later

As a start-up company, you have to deal with "chicken or the egg" problems everyday. Here are a few examples:

You: "I believe this business can be huge. Having some external funding would really help us aggressively address this opportunity."
Investor: "Sounds interesting, but I need to see some serious tractions before we would be interested in investing."
Your Friend: "Sounds like you have a chicken or the egg problem."

You: "I need to get some business partners to support our business in order that I can attract some significant customers."
Business Partner: "I would need to see some customer testimonials and successes before we would be interested in participating in a business partnership."
Your Friend: "Sounds like you have a chicken or the egg problem."

You: "We are needing to drive user awareness and adoption in order to grow this business faster."
Marketing/PR Advisor: "Your story would be much better if you had some significant "unique visitors" and "registered users."
Your Friend: "Sounds like you have a chicken or the egg problem."

So my advice to other business founders dealing with the same problem is to focus on the chicken. In the case of GetQuik, we have the challenge of needing restaurant partners to get customers, and customers to get restaurant partners. So rather than trying to solve both problems, we choose ONE and only one battle. We focused all our energy on getting restaurant partners. We are closing in on 100 restaurant participating on our site. Now we have the chicken or at least a chick, we now have to figure out how to get this chicken to lay eggs. We are switching gears to drive increased user traffic to our site (THE EGG).

It is amazing how many "chicken and egg" problems you can solve by taking action, focusing, and simply overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds.

We have solved a good chunk of our "chicken and the egg" challenges, and have many more to go.

Keep this in mind. The answer to "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" is not the most important thing. What is important is that there are both chickens and eggs. In fact there are 35 million chickens in the US alone! Good luck on your chicken/egg quest.

Yelp! Friend or Foe?

While sitting in the headquarter offices of Chordiant Software (automation software for service-oriented businesses), I recall a statistic they posted in their lobby. If my memory serves me correctly, the stat mentioned that 98% of customers do not log a formal complaint to the business after a bad customer experience. So what happens to these upset customers? Well they probably tell 10 of their friends about their poor customer experience and spend their money elsewhere.

That was pre-Yelp. Now that same customer logs onto Yelp and tells the other million plus Yelpers in delightly colorful proses of their consumer mis-experience. I am sure that 98% will continue to drop as customers find how loudly they can speak with one sharply-written Yelp review. Yes, the proverbial "pen" is mightier than the sword.

Business owners can do two things: closer your eyes and hope that Yelp goes away (not bloody likely), or embrace the invaluable, direct feedback that Yelp provides. Marketing people spend googlezillions of dollars collecting customer feedback, market research and surveys.

Here is a free tool to improve your customer service and business operations! The Yelp reviews are extremely detailed, so you can see which of your baristas or servers you need to re-train or perhaps even part ways with.

So business owners, save your yellow page advertising funds and utilize those funds in solving your operational or service weak spots. You can win more business and better yet, repeat business by getting that extra star on your Yelp ratings. Now the question of how many user reviews do we really need for one falafel house? That is another discussion altogether.

Restaurant of the Future

If you are like most people, there is a restaurant or cafe you go to where the staff knows what you are ordering as soon as you walk in the door. Cue the "Cheers" theme song here. They know that you like your Caesar dressing on the side, that you are allergic to shell-fish and that you like your Diet Coke with light ice. So wouldn't it be great if every restaurant you ate at were able to customize the experience to your particular needs?

Here are some of the features of the restaurant of the future:

1) Menu for U. Your menu will differ from your date's menu. The emphasis will be on your favorite items. Foods you can't stand (no broccoli for George H. Bush for example) will not be represented. Your food will also be customized to your current dietary needs. If you are diabetic or trying to control your cholesterol, your meal will be prepared with those medical conditions in mind.

2) No waiting for tables or lines for ordering. Restaurants will have your order information or dinner time managed properly so you don't waste any time waiting to eat (unless you prefer to wait of course - my date does look as good as her facebook picture!).

3) Music & Lighting customized to your needs. You might want Nirvana when hanging out with your college buddies at volume 11; but for your night out with your wife, you tune in the Sinatra, Dave Matthews & Elton John. Your date is not as attractive as the Facebook picture: turn down the lighting and keep the Guiness coming.

4) Invisible & Intelligent Payments. For the power lunch with your multi-gazillionaire client who is contemplating buying that Gulfstream jet from you, your bill is automatically billed against your corporate Platinum Amex card. For the tacos with your poker buddies, the bills are automatically split so you are only paying the $4.99 for your beef burrito, whereas Max with his shrimp and lobster super-enchaladas and Cuervo-1800 frozen margarita has a $24.50 hit to his limited-time low interested Chase Dividend card.

5) Off-Peak Discounts. If you walk into the most popular restaurant in San Francisco at 2:00pm you can take your choice of tables and get in and out of the restaurant in 35 minutes. Try that at 12:30PM on a Thursday, and by 1:45PM, your boss is wondering if you might be at AT&T park watching the Giants day game. So wouldn't restaurants have more revenues business and tips if they a steady flow of customers from 11am - 3pm, instead of being totally dead till noon, and once again at 1:30pm? Expect to see time shifted discounts to encourage the early birds and late lunchers.

6) Customized Service. You prefer the ultra-attentive server with the bubbly personality, while your boss prefers the minimal interruption but fills my water when it is less than 1/3 full server. Your server will know your preferences and peeves and know how to customize the experience to suit your needs.

7) Intelligent Groupings. You are proposing to your girlfriend of 4 years, but the table adjacent to the college kids celebrating their buddies 21st birthday and slamming sake-bombs is not what you had in mind. Your event will determine where you are seated in order to keep the private parties from the revelers.

What about my privacy? Let's face it. There is more information about your buying habits and preferences than you like to believe. Hell, you are sharing this information freely on MySpace with 60,000,000 of your closest friends. Once the work being done with the semantic web, virtualized payments, mobile-commerce, nanotechnology, and the like is complete, you can expect a more robust experience for every facet of your life including your meals. There will be much debate about the erosion of privacy, but in the Information age, privacy and anonymity is so 20th century. At least you can look forward to leaving the Benedryl and credit cards at home when going to the latest, greatest, all-natural fusion restaurant.

Dylan (Bootstrapping), the Beatles (VC)

Bob Dylan and the Beatles are two of my favorite music artists. The pathways to success for Dylan and the Beatles are interesting to analyze.

BOB DYLAN (eBay)
As a young man (either a teen or early 20s), Dylan packed his guitar and harmonica from Hibbings, MN; changed his name from Robert Zimmerman to Bob Dylan; and moved to NY city. There he quickly made a name for himself in the folk music artist community. If you have read or seen documentaries about Dylan ("Don't Look Back" and "No Direction Home" are two excellent ones), you come to realize that besides being a musical genious, he was also hugely charismatic. He received tons of critical acclaim, and he quickly took off from there. The guy was just that much better, determined and ingenious than the rest.

Bob Dylan's Internet Equivalent: eBay. Read "The Perfect Store" by Adam Cohen for the whole store. The main story line is that Pierre Omidyar founded eBay from his apartment. He then bootstrapped eBay to success. They never had an unprofitable month EVER! (I know, double negative) They did take $5 million from Sequoia, but left it in the bank.

THE BEATLES (PAYPAL)
The Beatles formed in 1962. They become a Liverpool favorite at a local tavern called the Cavern Club. In order to improve their game, they headed over to Germany where they played massive sets and learned how to play a huge variety of R&B and rock and roll songs. Their manager Brian Epstein signed on to represent them after hearing them play at the Cavern Club. Brian took them to all the major labels and got rejection after rejection. Finally they hit paydirt when they made a call to a producer at a small label called Parlophone Records, George Martin. George instantly recognized the potential and signed them up. After a few successful hits in the UK, the Beatles and George Martin moved to Capitol Records. Capitol launched a brilliant strategy to introduce the Beatles to America. "The Beatles are coming!" The launch was arguably one of the greatest marketing campaigns in the history of music. The Beatles rocked the house on the Ed Sullivan show, and the rest is history.

The Beatles Internet equivalent: PayPal. Read "PayPal Wars" by Eric Johnson. PayPal was founded by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel. Max was a young 20-something technical genious from Stanford, and Peter was a economics wiz with a successful career in finance when they decided to sign on to begin PayPal. They received VC backing and then quickly went through a few business models (mobile payments with Palm Pilots was the initial concept). They finally settled on sending money via email. In conjuction with the business plan, they came up with the massively popular $10 sign up, $10 referral bonus campaign. On December 10, 1999, PalPal had approximately 2500 users registered. By April 2000, they eclipsed 1,000,000 registered users. Although they were buring through their VC warchest, Peter Thiel was able to raise an additional $100 million in VC funding before the bubble burst. PayPal survived the nuclear winter in Silicon Valley and has become the crown jewel in the eBay machine.

Would the Beatles have made it as big as they did if they had to toil for years as an indie band? Would PayPal have become the gold standard for on-line payments without the $100+ million in VC funding? Hard to say. Lennon, McCartney, Levchin and Thiel are all geniuses. Give them Capitol Records and VC wind behind their sails, and they can and did dominate their worlds.

A rule that you hear often in business is "cash is king." Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn (and PayPal) gives great speeches on this topic. The message he delivers is that if you have the talent but not the funding, run as fast as you can to build your business before the cash runs out. On the flip side, if you have the financial resources, flex your muscles to take a dominant position using this advantage. He explains it better than this, but that is the gist of it.