There’s something about you turntable.fm

Published on July 3, 2011 in social computing, with 0 Comments. Tags: , .

Three weeks ago, Turntable.fm became the hype in the echo chamber. Like I do with everything, I'm been observing and reflecting on how it's being used by other people and myself. In short, I like it. It's such a simple idea that could further disrupt the traditional radio business.

What it is
For the uninitiated, it's an an Internet radio station, with a quirky web page that people interact in. People either sit in the room bopping their heads (approving the music) or people put themselves in the DJ chair and compete against another 4 DJ's for the best tunes according to the room theme.

Turntable: room

My first observation: Spotify will kill it. Or not.
While they appear to be completely different, I keep thinking about my Spotify experience a year ago when I was in Europe: I was hooked. And it was for the same reason — I could subscribe to a friends playlist (turntable I can follow a friend and hear when they play). The benefit is that I can get filtered serendipity and discovery, like how radio has done for decades. (For example, you may love a particular kind of music but have no idea what the latest tracks are or the time to curate playlists — but you have friends who do so would rather follow their enthusiasm.)

Turntable's cool, but I keep thinking it's Myspace and Spotify is Facebook. When Spotify launches in the US (rumoured to finally be this month), then turntable's core value in providing this discovery will be replaced as Spotify is just an amazing service. But I'm not so sure about that now, as actually it might be away where playlists in Spotify get generated so it's completely complementary.

My second observation: it's competitive curation
In this explosion of social media, people are starting to appreciate the role editors played in the traditional media. Curated content is a skill that algorithms still can't beat humans at (and actually, the best kinds are based off existing human preferences).

With Turntable, you select a room and sit there listening to the music. People compete for the "DJ" spot at the table (of which there are a maximum of 5). A chat room allows people in the room to chat like the old days of IRC and give direct feedback to the DJ's or discuss music. The vote meter helps regulate the quality of music as high votes not only impact the DJ's rating but down votes can cut the song being played and move onto the next DJ's track.

This motivation to please the crowd means there is an active effort to curate the playlists into something worthwhile. That's an interesting concept to consider, as playlists in past have tended to be done by people along without real consideration of others listening to it (or at least, real time feedback to consider it).

My third observation: it's social, like the Athenian assembly social
Turntable: chatroom

I don't fully understand why yet, but the chat room aspect is the most powerful component of the experience despite being the most subtle. While the voting mentioned in my second observation creates a motivation to enhance their DJ reputation by playing good music, the chatroom makes this curation directly in touch with the audience.

It's like a democracy, where those representing and controlling the room's music are actually completely dependent on the goodwill of the audience. The voting is the main way this is enforced, but the chatroom is where people will negotiate. Games will be determined where certain patterns in music will be played; feedback of bad songs will be given to DJ's; and requests will be sent. It's like a radio station completely accountable to its audience.

Like Twitter, the service will evolve based on these discussions. Some of Twitter's most useful features like @ replying (which turned it into a communications tool) and hashtags (which turned into into a information resource) were invented and popularised by their most passionate users. Turntable.fm offers a similar utility around music and I think will evolve in a similar way. Like any startup, it's hard to know where turntable.fm will be in six months time, but one things for sure: it's sticky and it's only going to get better.

I’ve left Vast.com; have joined CRV.com

Published on June 11, 2011 in personal, with 0 Comments.

Its been two years since I moved to Silicon Valley to work at Vast.com. It's an amazing team, and being mentored by former CEO Kevin Laws and the current CEO John Price will leave an impact on me for the rest of my career.

However, I've decided to leave Vast and have accepted an offer in what is literally the heart of Silicon Valley on Sand Hill road, at Charles River Ventures (CRV). My new boss is George Zachary (ranked as #48 by Forbes, and rising).

Despite not announcing it (thanks Marshall), I've received many a private congratulations and a few publicly.

I can't say much about my role publicly other than I'm the new best friend of the seed portfolio at CRV, where their success determines my success. So in that regard, I'm looking forward to making them as successful as can be!

As an aside, I'm already behind in my email and sorry to those waiting. But since people have heard I work in VC now, my inbox has hit a new level not just in volume of requests for my help in something but aggressiveness to do so. Please be respectful, thanks :-)

I’m a hustler baby

Published on May 5, 2011 in Business, with 0 Comments. Tags: , , .

Out of StartupBus this year, I've seen some amazing hackers. It's a culture I've tried to encourage since we first ran the event (and more on that below on what I mean by that). But what about the non-technical people, are they hackers? Yes, but no. I came to a new realisation this March that you need more than a hacker to be successful in a startup: you need someone who can hustle. And often that's what the "business" person is in the founding team.

I'm not the first person to realise this and in fact, my friend Micah wrote an excellent post about this last July.

So what's a hustler? And actually, what's a hacker? Let's start there first -- Micah says the following:

A Hacker is more than a code monkey, who can quickly build software and find interesting ways to hack together code. Thats a developer. Thats someone who is definitely an important part of a startup, but not critical to its success. A Hacker is someone who looks the problem, and solves it in a unique and special way. A Hacker finds the process of problem solving exciting and interesting, and spends the majority of their time looking at the problem in multiple ways, finding many potential solutions.

Paul Graham wrote a great essay on it many years ago. I'm still trying to work out myself what a greater hacker is, but I would essentially define a hacker as someone who understands how to make the best decisions to prioritise their efforts on what has the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time. Meaning, a perfectionist will treat a challenge as a sum of equal parts, diligently working through all the work without regard of the higher purpose. A hacker, would think of the end goal and take shortcuts on the things that are not core to the long-term effect.

It would be like me saying I need something that looks like a clock, so that it fills a void in the background for a movie shoot I need to do. I tell you that you have 24 hours. There's nothing you can buy, and it needs to be made by you from materials on a farm the shoot is occurring.
A perfectionist would get lost in the mechanics and the quest to build a functional clock, where the hands correspond to the actual time. A hacker would get a hamster spinning in a wheel, which triggers movement of the clock's hands. Both work, it's just the perfectionist will plan on work that will take a month building it, forgetting the fact he needs to do it in 24 hours or he fails; the hacker's solution isn't a long term solution, but that's the point -- it's achieving the purpose for what is needed right now.

So what's a hustler? I think it's a different skill set. Micah defines it as follows:

A Hustler on the other other hand is a relationship builder. Someone who can build direct relationships with their customers. They arent really promoters, although they do a lot of promotion. They arent salespeople, although they do a lot of selling. They are passion people. They have the ability to articulate their passion clearly and in a way that gets other people equally passionate.

Unlike a hacker, the hustler isn't required to prioritise their efforts. Instead, what they do is extract value from, say another person (like paying customers). It's like saying a hacker is someone who smartly builds value of a product, while the hustler smartly builds value by selling the product. Hackers are good at products and process (the value creation), hustlers are good at selling and relationships (capturing the value generated).

These days in tech, they say a good designer is needed along with a good coder, but I think this is just talking about a specific skill set. Hackers might not know how to code or use photoshop: but they can get the job done. It's a mentality. And likewise, a hustler can come in very different forms, depending on the industry and the team. But make no mistake, if you're looking for a founding team, you need a least one hustler. Because without someone to hustle the customers, you have no real business in the long term.