Story of Why I am Typing on Windows 8 (Toshiba version); and By The Way -- Zero on Intuitiveness Index

Given that I am CEO of a company (Zula) developing a user facing service, I am sensitive to  user-friendliness of new apps/gadgets/”computers”. In order to understand why I ended up with a Toshiba laptop running Windows 8, a little background.

For the past two years I have mainly worked off an iPhone, an iPad, and sometimes an old (3-4 years)  “desktop” in my winery office.

My favorite, hands down -- the iPad, along with a Logitech cover keyboard. Unfortunately it was stolen two months ago, and since then I have trying to figure out with what to replace it. A healthy combination of procrastination and "too-busy" have had me limping along with my iPhone and borrowed time on winery desktop. Definitely cut into my productivity.

On the home front, various wintel (Intel based running Windows) laptops died or slowly ground to almost a complete halt when trying to do anything beyond stare at the screen saver. My almost-seven year old son is going through a phase where he needs to lose himself in  computer games to calm down. My older kids have long figured out that having no cable does not mean they need to miss the latest content (what we used to call TV shows and/or movies) -- but rather they can tune in via Hulu, Youtube, Amazon, and more. But all that requires an available surfing device.

I bought two HP Chromebooks, but unfortunately found out days after that that version of HP Chromebook suffered from a defective charging system. Google sent me new chargers but they didn’t work. Now I need to go chase HP/Google to replace them.

Which means at home we are down to an old laptop running Windows XP that turns off randomly and has zero battery strength left (needs to be plugged in to work) and Haviva’s Mac Air. Now Haviva is justifiably sensitive about kids using her Mac Air, but regardless they take it all the time, challenging Apple to fight off all the viruses they seem to attract.

So I have been under pressure for some time to get something new for the house…

At Ben-Gurion Airport this morning I had some time to check out laptops in the duty-free. And realized that I was embarking on 4 day business trip with just my iPhone, which is bit risky. On top of that, I thought of typing long emails (or blog posts, like this one) on my iPhone and the pressure mounted to get something.

There was a table of Mac laptops, which with all the different configurations, but still a small table. Apple makes beautiful machines without too many different options. And there were tables and tables of WinTel laptops. Toshiba, Assus, Lenovo, and more. Prices all over the place, options way too confusing to understand.

Finally I said to the salesman “look, I just need a computer for the kids to use.” He suggested the Toshiba, it was a reasonable price and I said OK. Then I saw it even had DVD player -- I thought that was a cute retro touch, but will allow us to play the hundreds of DVDs Haviva made me keep when we recently moved (our DVD player died last year).

Salesman asked me if I wanted him to “take it out of the box and set it up.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but said OK, however explained that I wanted the settings and all commands to be in English (I love the Hebrew language but even after 18 years I simply can’t follow Hebrew computer speak, gives me a headache). Of course, after I opened the computer waiting at the gate (plane was delayed so had time to play) I saw he chose Hebrew as the default language….

OK, back to the computer itself. The laptop is running Windows 8. Very pretty tiles. First problem -- how to get online? I could not find in any of the pretty tiles something like good old wireless network manager. Anything I did push simply said I wasn't connected (which I knew). Finally I found a way to get to a familiar looking screen which had the network doo-hicky [that is a very technical term for the traditional network icon]. Clicking on that allowed me to select the free WiFi network in the airport (supplied by Netvision, talk about a blast from the past).

OK, now on-line. Uh…what to do now? I clicked on Office icon, but that just asked me to sign up to buy license. I just bought a computer, I should be able to type some text without paying -- no?  Finally found my way to email app, which asked me to sign up for an outlook email address. That seemed to be free (also could have signed up for Hotmail but that would have been way too anachronistic). I sent myself a test message to my gmail address and -- it worked! Very exciting.

Allowed me to be comforted that at the very least I will be able to use the email application to type on the plane (which I am doing). Almost every other tile was an add for something, clicking on resulted in Internet Explorer being launched and needing to buy a subscription.

Couldn’t figure out how to set the time and date.

Bottom line, on my experience so far this laptop, and it’s rendering of Windows 8, gets a big fat ZERO on the intuitiveness index.

I am sure Microsoft had many, many UX/UI experts involved over several years to deliver the experience I just went through. I am sad to have to say that outside of team meetings not sure what they were doing all that time. Outside of the pretty tiles, which does take us away from the standard and very-tired “start” button, Windows 8 needs a lot of work before regular people like me will enjoy using it.

But soon I will be back on line, will download Chrome, and use the laptop as glorified Chromebook. Hopefully with a charger that works! 

You want to "Crowdfund"? Start with a Crowd; or What Used to be called Friends and Family

Crowds and the effect they can have on our society has been an important part of my life for many years. Both my parents have been (and still are, thank God) active politically, organizers of "crowds," of groups of people coming together to effect positive positive change. That crowd bug passed to me, and for 45 years have lived most of the time on the edge of the crowd, helping pull and push in this direction or another (some might say that at times I fall off the edge...).

For 18 years my  "professional career" has been start-up guy. As co-founder, CEO, board member, investor, you name it, I've done it.

When I first started as an entrepreneur I was bewildered how to raise money -- how does one "start" if your bank account is at zero or close to...when I read up on it I discovered the phrase "friends and family." Back then, the recommendation was first go to your inner circle, your friends and family, and try and get them to back you (with cash or in-kind...housing/food/etc.). The theory was, these folks were essentially helping to contribute to your success -- they were not savvy financial investors -- but rather kindly backers.

Now, I don't know if you ever mixed family and money -- but usually not a good combination, or for that matter with friends. Oh sure, if desperate and need to crash somewhere, get some food, even emergency money for an operation, family and friends can be there for you and nobody will ever look back. But as a healthy well educated person, to ask family and friends to give you (ok, "invest") money in your dream of a ____________(fill in blank with appropriate business dream) is an entirely different matter.

On top of that, my parents were public servants most of their careers, and the honest kind, so they didn't have a spare $1 million to help bankroll my start-up (back then was much more expensive to start, no Google App Engine or Amazon Web Services). So what to do? I looked to my friends. Well, at the time they were a bunch of 20-somethings, either still in school/army/unemployed. None of them had any loose change of $ that was needed to create new software.

So where was this mythical "friends and family" round going to come from? I needed to go out there and get new friends (family is family!). Not to replace to my old ones, but to supplement the ones I already had (this was pre-facebook, we are talking a handful of existing friends).

Through a lot of luck, and somewhat smooth talking, I gained some friends who did have spare cash looking to take a ride on the start-up roller coaster. But it took endless meetings, presentations, wild-eyed pontificating on paradigm shifts. And making new friends. And for the past 18 years, has remained a challenge. Never "easy" to raise money, even if now I have some friends with loose change..

Which brings me to what today we call "crowd-funding."

Let me clearly state -- I am a huge fan of OurCrowd, Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and all other crowd-funding initiatives, and a direct participant in Our Crowd (who kicked off off the seed round for  Zula and currently raising follow-on) and Indiegogo (where winery I co-founded, Jezreel Valley Winery, is currently running "Wine for Life" campaign). I am an angel investor in Mosaic Solar, bringing crowd funding to renewable energy porjects.

But there are clear differences between the different platforms.

First, left me put OurCrowd aside, as they have done an incredible job, led by Jon Medved and the rest of his amazing team. Jon uses the term crowd funding, but he has gamed the system. OurCrowd has curated, and is constantly expanding, it's built in crowd. In other words, OurCrowd has signed up thousands (more than 4,000 to date) angel investors who have spent the time to register on the site and receive deal flow. The friends I didn't have 18 years ago...OurCrowd management screens and selects a handful of start-ups every month to expose to their growing investor community. From the numbers I have heard, maybe 2-3% of the deals that approach OurCrowd make it on to their platform. In this way, OurCrowd is similar to the classic VC model. What OurCrowd has done is reshape the economics behind

At Indiegogo and Kickstarter, and many other crowdfunding platforms you will NOT get seen if they do not feature you. And they will not feature you if they don't see momentum. And you will not have momentum if you do not show up with your own crowd. Yup, back to the friends and family. Your "inner circle." By all accounts, these people are supposed to make up at least 20-30% of your target raise -- and only then will "strangers" even think to support you, or get featured by the editors of the platform's front pages. These types of platforms are more egalitarian and deal neutral than OurCrowd --  anyone can create a project to fund. There is almost no screening. From Indiegogo I recently heard that they have over 7000 campaigns live on the site right now (campaigns can run for maximum of 60 days, so annually its a big number, easily tens of thousands of projects jostling to be seen).

Yes, there is some mix of the above models. When we went live last May (2013) on OurCrowd site for Zula, we spread the word. Many friends joined OurCrowd because they were interested in Zula, and this allowed them to invest a relatively small amount ($10,000 is the OurCrowd minimum) which we as a company could not handle. Thus the relationship between company and platform does become symbiotic, if everyone does what they should  -- the "crowdfundee" can help bring more traffic to the platform, which can spill over into other projects seeking a crowd (and funding).

Bottom line: In the 18 years since I was first told I needed to raise money from friends and family, a lot has changed but much is the same. Just now it's called a crowd -- and if you don't have one (or the right one) don't expect to succeed at "crowdfunding."

Zula As Pop Up Community: and Mishkan

Recently I was preparing to start my Zula shpeil (or in VC talk -- my "pitch") to a VC in NY and he pre-empted me and used my words before I could say them -- and then he made them even better as he took the metaphor to a higher level.

The term I have bandying about recently is "pop-up communities" to explain the power of Zula. I will not use this post to go into the details of current and planned features and functionaity of Zula (check out our website and service itself for that). But I do want to walk through what I mean by pop-up community and how it resembles a Sukka (the "huts" Jews built in desert during their 40 years of wandering just after leaving Egypt). (the sukka metaphor comes from David Hirsch of Metamorphic Ventures -- not sure if David will invest but he already gave us some pearls of wisdom, so he is part of the Zula story now). 

And then recently, sitting with the wonderful Mort Meyerson (who has invested in Zula) we took the metaphor to an even higher level -- the ultimate sukka, which is the mishkan. 

But back to the concept of pop-up community -- what do I mean by that? (don't worry, weave back in Sukka and Mishkan). 

Over the past few years the term "pop-up store" has been trendy in retail (I fist came across in NY but now has spread all over the world). A pop-up store is one which pops up in an available space but with the intention from the start that it might be for only a limited time, whether that be a few days, weeks or months. The reasons behind the temporal nature could include excess inventory, seasonality, or simply testing the waters before committing to a long term lease. And there have been many cases of such successes that the temporary becomes permanent. 

The same can be said for many of our work teams these days. As SMBs (small and medium sized businesses) dominate (most new jobs are created by SMBs) and corporations become more fluid, ad-hoc team formation is becoming the norm, rather the exception. 

Twenty years ago (and to some degree still today) it was possible to communicate only with people who worked for the same corporation, in technical terms "behind the firewall." Today, with the rise of the consultant and the project based approach, teams tackling an issue on behalf of GE or GM more likely than not will include members who do NOT carry a company card, and are not credentialed to use the company's domain based tools. 

Over the past years we have also seen the acceptance of outsourcing, offshoring, and cross company collaboration at levels unimaginable twenty years ago. 

The Mishkan, or the tabernacle, was the first ritual space created by the Jewish people in the desert after Moses came down from Mt Sinai. According the the Bible, very clear and detailed instructions were given as to the construction of the Mishkan. But the Mishkan was not a permanent structure -- in fact a lot of the detail involved how to put up and breakdown the Mishkan so it could be carried along in the Journey (and my tribe, the Levites, were tasked with being the Mishkan porters while the Jewish people marched -- and we were responsible for the construction and breakdown...interesting that I should be the co-founder and CEO of Zula). 

The essential nature of the Mishkan was that of a non-permanent structure...it was intended to be part of the Journey. 

When the Jewish people reach the promised land the mishkan continued to move around...until King Solomon (Shlomo) builds the first permanent structure, the first "Temple" (or Holy House). It could be said everything went down-hill from there. According to many commentators (and my own reading) the whole notion of creating a monarchy, a formal structure, was itself not seen by God as an overly positive move. 

The corporation of the 20th Century was the Western world's version of the Temple -- a seemingly permanent entity that provided a focal point for much of the working class. But much like the temple of old, permanence is fleeting. No building or entity is too big to fall. 

And in the 21st century we are retuning to much more fluid ways of work -- small teams coming together, setting up and breaking down structures. The Cloud is our desert -- it is the backdrop for our journeys. 

Over the coming months I will continue to develop this concept, and touch more on how the true liberation is one in which we recognize the temporal nature of all realities, we should never feel servants to any regime be it a corporation or a monarchy. 

Zula is doing its' part to allow people to communicate in ways that don't respect the old structures.  Where will this journey take us? Come along with us and let's find out together. See you in Zula.