"Configure your email client (e.g. Outlook, Eudora, Netscape Mail)": SAY WHAT??

"Configure your email client (e.g. Outlook, Eudora, Netscape Mail)": SAY WHAT??

Been a long time since I wrote a blog post, but in looking at Gmail settings today (as to why is subject for another post...) I noticed the above. 

How many of you can even remember Eudora or Netscape Mail? Anyone still using those applications? I am sure some people. Outlook has held on because people have it at work, almost noone outside of an office chooses to use it. 

And yet nobody at Google has changed the above. 

Why?

Well, it's in settings that are buried and only an explanation, not a feature itself ("e.g"). 

In addition it is not something that is broken, just awkward. 

But why did it trigger my interest? 

Because how quickly our habits change -- especially in area that is close to my heart, in communications and messaging. 

Not so long ago desktop email clients were the standard way consumers and worker bees alike managed their email traffic. In addition there were desktop applications for what we called then "Instant Messaging." (as opposed to email that was seen as less than instant and more formal as well as cluttered) 

The web/cloud picked up steam obviously for many years, but messaging remained application centered, Sure there were servers out there helping our mail move from place to place but it felt more like a traditional letter, especially if we deleted from server as we downloaded (anyone remember that?). The more geeky among us knew that even if we deleted from server chances were there still were copies somewhere, but for most consumers once email was downloaded it was only on their computer, especially for consumer email. 

Hotmail (which came before Gmail) and other webmail providers started to change the user experience paradigm. But it was only with Gmail that it went completely mainstream. And even gmail at first assumed that many, as indicated above, would continue using a desktop client to manage their email. 

Today gmail can handle it all, multiple addresses, and can even work in off-line mode. We have gmail apps on our deskptop, ipad, iphone, android, etc. 
And yet that certainly wasn't enough, Google continues to try and improve the experience, with layers like "Inbox" and third players like Sanemail try to help Gmail work better. 

On top of that even in Google, clickable from Gmail, are other products like Gchat, and then there are hangouts, Google +. 

All within Google! 

Once we leave world of Google we see Facebook Messenger (they gave up on email product). WhatsApp. Skype. Zula. 

Which of these will people still be using in 5 years? 10 years. Difficult to tell. Eudora has not been available to download for many years, and the same goes for Netscape Mail. They live on only in the buried settings of Gmail. 

However less than ten years ago they were both very much alive. 15 years ago Eudora was a major check of the email application market. 

I personally don't think Outlook will survive either. Recently tried Office 365 Online, painful experience. But in the enterprise market things live on for a long time. Heck, many big companies still have IBM mainframes and need COBOL engineers to maintain their code. 

While Zula is my direct interest in this market -- I am fascinated in general at the trends in communication, and the increasing speed at which new things come (and sometimes go). Will Snapchat be around in 5 years? I wouldn't bet too much on either possibility. Too early to tell. But I guarantee will be VERY different in 5 years. 

OK, need to go look for my Palm 5 to see my meetings for rest of the day. Peace. 

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. 

What To Do Next -- Start-Up CEOs Lonely Dilemma

One of the problems of being a seed stage start-up CEO is that no one is really telling you what to next. Generally boards of seed stage companies are either non-existent or pretty passive. Often there are "active" angel investors, and/or microfunds involved, but they usually have so many investments that they are more reactive than proactive.

The problem I am highlighting is felt the most by CEOs who are not coding -- which unfortunately is my reality (although just signed up for Ruby on Rails course). I know enough about coding to be dangerous but not enough to really help...when coding at least after there is agreed spec goals are defined.

Of course can spend time in promotion, marketing, thought leadership, long term planning, budgeting, admin, HR, corporate finance, team empowering, and more -- no lack of things to do. And each of those things could easily fill 20 hours a day and more. Of course some are incredible on managing their time, on their own, and can set for themselves goals, task lists, in other words managing themselves. I am pretty good at all of that -- and often excel at it. But all of those skills and tools don't ameliorate the fact there is only one person "telling" you what to do next -- you.

The position is essentially a lonely one -- there is no one really setting an agenda, reviewing achievements. You can seek out praise and feedback, but it doesn't naturally come to you.

In the past I have written about the seed-stage start-up CEO as a benevolent dictator, which inherently is not a warm and fuzzy role -- to get warm and fuzzy you need your team to reflect it back to you.

In a distributed work force the problem is more acute -- often you are really alone (physically). Sure can engage on ______ (name your favorite social networking platform) but that still has not replaced the water-cooler effect.

And yes there are endless team collaboration tools (some better than others, see Zula) but they are only as good as the use you make of them. And again, event the best is still a tool for bridging the gaps -- but gaps remain.

Is there a way to be less lonely? Sure, but takes pushing yourself. Engage your investors more, make them feel like you really are listening to them -- so while not a formal board the communication is two way. Create forums for shareholders to connect on a regular basis. Take on a mentor. Schedule regular mentorship time (no matter how experienced we all could use help from someone not ourselves).

There is no magic formula -- the position is inherently lonely. So don't let yourself slip into endless FB/Twitter sessions -- you have work to do! You are supposed to lead! (talking to myself as well of course).

 

The Blessed Need for Physicality and Snow in Jerusalem

Today I was due to celebrate together with the Israeli wine industry -- it was going to be the first formal wine event I would attend as a partner in Jezreel Valley Winery. The event was scheduled to take place at the Crown Plaza hotel in Jerusalem. As half the Zula team lives in the Jerusalem area, I thought beautiful combination of Zula product meetings by day, wine event by night. (also was due to pick up cable to charge my electric car, but that's for another post).

And then in started snowing in Jerusalem. Every few years, same drill -- few snowflakes and the city stops. Close the highways! cancel school! Remain calm!

Truth be told, there is some sense in the hysteria, as Israeli drivers are, well, Israeli drivers to begin with, and putting slippery white stuff turning quickly to black grimy slush is not a good formula for safe roads in the nation's capital.

Zula staff stayed home. That's fine, we are a distributed work force to begin with, and we are developing solutions for teams to communicate when not sitting together -- so not such a big deal.

But a wine event with no people? The organizers took the decision to postpone to next week.

I did not travel to Jerusalem.

All of this is a reminder of how much the physical, the "real," plays a part in our seemingly almost completely virtual lives.

Could we have a virtual wine event where we all drink our wines at home and discuss? Perhaps, but with today's tech still can't pass a glass of wine over Facebook Messenger. Or WhatsApp. Or even Zula (but we are working on it!).

For some things we need to physically come together. To smell together, to taste together. To simply be together.

As someone who grew up in NY with plenty of snow, no need to rush to experience it. But for many Israelis snow is exotic, radically different reality. They will go in droves, wait hours in traffic -- just to throw a snowball. And God bless them. After all the Playstations, X-boxes, immersive games, virtual communities, we know that humans still desire the physical touch of a snowball. Make a snowman -- a real one, not on Miniclip.

Living my life on the balance between the virtual and the real, always nice when Nature comes along and reminds us that all fall at the feet of a few cm (inches) of snow in Jerusalem, the capital of the world.

May we be blessed to continue to treasure our humanity, even as maximize the use of tools like Zula, that help us keep the connection going when we are not sitting together. And we can chat about how the good the wine was that we drank together, and look forward to the next time we drink together.

Snapchat as Sex Appeal, Facebook has Become Boring Infrastructure (and wants to be sexy again)

I finally watched the Steve Jobs movie on a flight to California (most appropriately). Just before read through a Facebook comment thread to a blog post that my friend and Zula colleague Hillel Fuld wrote on the noise surrounding the supposed acquisition offers that Snapchat founders have turned down ($3 billion from Facebook, $4 billion from Google, but whats a billion amongst lunatics)(and yes, I am lunatic too, anyone working in industry is certifiable). Back to Jobs -- what he was about was radical innovation. That is what inspired him -- to use technology to move people. Change how they look at the world. And yes, in an extremely well designed and sexy wrapper. 

I am not going to get into whether or not Snapchat is worth $3 or $4 billion. When ever I am asked about the value of a company (including my own) I always say a company is worth what somebody is willing to pay. There is no objective value in our business (tech start-ups). 

What Snapchat does have right now is sex appeal -- and that is more valuable than a certain amount of users, business model, or defendable technology. Snapchat in particular has no technology (unless you think disappearing ink is "technology"). They do have have a "certain amount of users" (love quoting myself) but all that is vastly overshadowed by their current sex appeal -- and they are probably at their height of sexiness. And that, more than anything, is what Zuckerberg and friends are starting to lose. You see, when Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook he had sex appeal in spades (of a geeky, techy sort). In fact, Facebook got its start trading on sex appeal, which is what initial profiles and usage was all about on college campuses. 

Now Facebook has become, shudder the thought, a boring profitable, successful long-term company, with quarterly earnings, board meetings, strategy. Yup, sounds a lot like IBM. And that is not the rep Zuck wants...he wants to still be the 23 year old phenom with the new shiny thing everybody wants to touch, to own. 

Google long ago became part of the fabric of the web, as have Amazon, and a few other user-known companies, along with a whole set of lesser known companies that make up the infrastructure of what most people think of when thinking about the Internet. And at least in the Western world, the internet has become for most of us part of our lives, much the same way other "technology" companies developed into core utility elements. Some of them started out as owned by the public (even in capitalistic societies such as America). Think Ma Bell, for those of you old enough to remember the original government owned and operated phone company. It was like the mail -- boring service that simply worked and was there. You paid something for it, but you didn't really know if it was profitable or exactly how it worked. Similar to how electrical power is still supplied in many markets, tightly controlled by the governments (which will change, but not the subject right now). 

Utility companies were even traded on stock exchanges -- you didn't buy the stock so much for appreciation as for dividends, dependable, like municipal bonds. 

But utilities, infrastructure companies, are inherently boring. Lots of money flowing around, but not sexy. If you can figure out how to siphon off some of that money, you might be able to buy your way into sexiness, or pay people to tell you are sexy -- but the underlying asset -- boring. 

Facebook is slowly turning into just that -- infrastructure.  When at Zula we needed to decide on two possibilities for signing on (using your credentials from third party to automatically create a Zula account for you) we chose Facebook and Google. We made the assumption that almost 100% of our potential users would have an account with at least one of those companies -- we are looking at them (Facebook and Google) as providing a utility to us, the new sexy guys. 

Without Intel none of what we consider the Internet would be possible, but nobody would call Intel sexy. Dependable, solid, smart, thoughtful, yes. But not sexy. And their stock price reflects that lack of sex appeal. 

So now back to the Snapchat debate. Bottom line: people are prepared to pay a lot for sex. And sex appeal is one degree removed. Snapchat has it, Facebook is losing it, Google lost long ago (and to be clear -- I love Google and constantly praise them, and I actually think they are sexy, just in the public eye they are...Google). 

Do I think Snapchat founders should sell to one of the "utility" players? Well, if Snapchat thinks that they too will become a core part of the fabric of the Web, and they want to be running the company when that happens then no, they shouldn't sell. I personally don't see Snapchat having what it takes to go the distance, but companies also evolve. Perhaps they will...but during that journey they will need to develop business model, start generating revenue, deliver a return on investment -- in other words, grow up and become a boring company. My recommendation to Snapchat founders: sell when you can. You will not be sexy forever.