As a "start-upist," as we say in Hebrew, a person who starts things, I am used to going against the trend. I am experienced in looking at reality and believing I have the power to change that reality. And thank God, I have had the fortune to be involved in some major shifts in reality over the past few decades.
Yesterday a great light went out in the world -- Rabbi Menachem Froman, the "Rav" of Tekoa, but so much more than that, passed from our world.
Rabbi Froman was the utlimate start-upist -- he did not accept anything as the way it should be, and until his last days fought to change our reality, and our perceptions of reality.
Rabbi Froman's "weapons" were his love for all people, his fierce intellect, his smile, his hugs, his joy in life.
I had the blessing to meet Rabbi Froman a few times over the past twenty years, and have followed his activities with great interest, fascination, respect, admiration, and love.
Rabbi Froman was prepared to go anywhere, and meet anyone, if he felt it would help make our world a better place.
My only critique of Rabbi Froman is that he was so good, that he outshone anyone else around him, so we are left not knowing who his peers are, who will carry on his legacy...in that sense Rabbi Froman left the perception that he was a one-man show, a start-up built around a cult of personality. Not so different than another of my teachers, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who only after his death gained the respect he deserved in his lifetime -- and only after he left our world did we stat to understand the depth of his message.
18 years after the passing of Carlebach I feel like it is just yesterday that I spoke to him, heard him sing, passed him on the street. I did not have the same personal relationship with Rav Froman, but thanks to the immediacy of digital media (yes, Rav Froman was on Facebook) felt close to him. I pray that we take sparks of peace that Rav Froman created in his lifetime, and fan them together in flames that light the way to a future of love and joy throughout our region.
I leave you with this relatively recent interview with Rav Froman, worth the time:
http://www.globalonenessproject.org/library/interviews/rabbi-froman-complete-interview
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Start-up CEO as Benevolent Dictator
Those that have worked for me and/or with me, know that I strive to reach consensus around major decisions in the life of a company. I find that to keep a start-up team motivated, you need to keep everyone feeling like partners in the major decisions.
But, what happens when the drive to consensus fails?
That's the real test of a start-up CEO, to keep the company moving forward even though there will be at least one disgruntled team member (and in an early stage start-up, every team member is critical...there are no "nice to have" people).
The real challenge is to take decisions, sometimes against the "majority" (in a start-up of three people majority will always leave one lonely person out in the cold).
Sure, a start-up can be run as a partnership, with equal voting to all co-founders, but often cap tables and real-life don't work so smoothly. In addition, there are day-to-day decisions that cannot wait for everyone to come to agreement, and yes, at times leadership is required../
One way to define the responsibility of a start-up CEO is to be a benevolent dictator. Most of the time striving for consensus, most of the time empowering team members -- but sometimes the need for a dictator arises, to take decisions and move the company forward.
This gets really tricky when the company is co-founded on an egalitarian basis, and roles are settled upon -- I argue that the naming of one of the co-founders is not only a title, but an imbuing one member of the team with greater "powers" than the rest. The social contract that is often unspoken, and certainly not written, is that the CEO will lead. The only way to lead is if the power to take decisions comes along with the title.
But start-up CEOs be warned: dictators can be overthrown. use your powers wisely.
But, what happens when the drive to consensus fails?
That's the real test of a start-up CEO, to keep the company moving forward even though there will be at least one disgruntled team member (and in an early stage start-up, every team member is critical...there are no "nice to have" people).
The real challenge is to take decisions, sometimes against the "majority" (in a start-up of three people majority will always leave one lonely person out in the cold).
Sure, a start-up can be run as a partnership, with equal voting to all co-founders, but often cap tables and real-life don't work so smoothly. In addition, there are day-to-day decisions that cannot wait for everyone to come to agreement, and yes, at times leadership is required../
One way to define the responsibility of a start-up CEO is to be a benevolent dictator. Most of the time striving for consensus, most of the time empowering team members -- but sometimes the need for a dictator arises, to take decisions and move the company forward.
This gets really tricky when the company is co-founded on an egalitarian basis, and roles are settled upon -- I argue that the naming of one of the co-founders is not only a title, but an imbuing one member of the team with greater "powers" than the rest. The social contract that is often unspoken, and certainly not written, is that the CEO will lead. The only way to lead is if the power to take decisions comes along with the title.
But start-up CEOs be warned: dictators can be overthrown. use your powers wisely.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
VoIP 18 Years Later...Still VoIP...sigh
VoIP 18 Years Later...Still VoIP
In 1995 an Israeli start-up, VocalTec, made global headlines by releasing a commercial software product called Iphone (yup, years before iphone there was a product called Iphone...). Iphone was the first commercial software package to become popular.
Thousands of articles appeared all over the world about "free phone calls" and the coming doom of the telecom industry.
Some of that was a "bit" pre-mature (more on that later), but VocalTec's initial popularity and media attention inspired a generation of entrepreneurs (I was blessed to be one of them, co-founding Delta Three, one of the world's first commercial VoIP service providers) and helped to eventually revolutionize the international telecommunications industry.
Part of our pre-maturity was that computers and networks were not ready for VoIP yet, so we mostly created a wholesale business providing rock-bottom rates to the international telecom players. Our customers were companies like AT&T, Cable and Wireless, Duetche Telecom and many others. A few years later computers and networks were ready for the launch of Skype and other consumer players, which finalized the complete destruction of the international pricing system.
I emphasize the international aspect because that is where the real revolution occurred. Recall that in 1995 the average price of a phone call from Tel Aviv to New York was $2 a minute, London to NY was $1 a minute.
Today international phone calls between most places are somewhere between free and pennies a minute, mainly due to the pressure of VoIP. Today Skype alone carries over 25% of the international voice traffic, as measured by Telegeography.
Over the past few years the formerly unconquered fields of mobile phones, tablets are slowly giving way to the ongoing VoIP wave (given the processing power of smartphones and mobile broadband). Companies like Viber, WhatsApp, and yes, even Skype have been adopted by hundreds of millions of mobile users, accelerating the next major upheaval, which is the move from expensive mobile plans to reasonable "all-you-can-eat" plans, with basically unlimited phone/SMS/Internet. That together with WiFi becoming more and more a part of the assumed digital fabric of life, means that more and more of the time we are "on-line," and the dreams of those of use who fantasized about Internet based communications are becoming more real.
But we still have a long way to go.
Inspired by my good friend Jeff Pulver, I recently co-founded with him a start-up (called Zula) to capitalize on the changing communications landscape, and bring to market a product that will introduce some joy and delight in how we initiate and maintain communications relationships -- and as much of that plays out these days over mobile devices, we have adopted a "mobile-first" product development strategy.
What we have discovered is that while much has changed, when working on mobile we still very much need to remember that one of the states of connectivity is off-line, and that there is a wide spectrum of states of connectivity and quality. When trying to design a product (that uses VoIP) that simply works we have to overcome many existing limitations of VoIP. We have checked all the leading VoIP products, and while some certainly work better than others, VoIP over mobile reminds me of the early days of VoIP on fixed internet. Only we ARE closer to our dreams.
I remember many years ago an Ericsson engineer telling me that people don't understand how much technical "magic" is involved in passing a live call from one cell to another, so that when people speed down a highway they can continue talking uninterrupted. Obviously this is on top of the core magic of wireless communications. Add to that challenge the data network, and trying to run real time communications apps on top of that network...and what is simple a "phone call" becomes the convergence of multiple streams of modern magic.
In the "old" days when you picked up a phone you heard something called dial tone -- which for my kids is almost a foreign concept. When we first started to commercialize VoIP we felt we need to fake some dial tone so people would think we were a real phone company. The same goes for hearing the ring-ring when calling someone. Today we choose what to hear, if we hear anything at all, during the time that the called party is notified that someone wants to talk to them.
I have been told many times over the past few years that the "young people" do not make phone calls anymore, that they use text for most of their conversations. I don't think this is only true amongst young people, as we all use email and other forms of textual communication to take the place of some of what we formerly could only accomplish with a phone call.
But that does not mean voice (and it's richer cousin, video) is dead. Far from it. But as VoIP enters prime time, and is looked upon not as a cheap/free alternative but as the core pathway for communications, we are challenged to keep the magic alive, and make the voice experience (what we use to call a "phone call") not only as good as it was, and is, but even better.
Even way back when it was mainly a wholesale replacement business, I preferred the term IP (Internet Protocol) Communications over Internet Telephony, or even Voice over IP, VoIP, which is how many techies still refer to it. IP Communications means we truly move the conversation, whether in the form of written text, voice, or video (or some combination thereof) to the internet, which today is reaching further and further across the globe.
The world is moving very fast, and we need to move faster if we want to stay ahead and develop products that finally allow people to do what was formerly impractical and impossible.
In 1995 an Israeli start-up, VocalTec, made global headlines by releasing a commercial software product called Iphone (yup, years before iphone there was a product called Iphone...). Iphone was the first commercial software package to become popular.
Thousands of articles appeared all over the world about "free phone calls" and the coming doom of the telecom industry.
Some of that was a "bit" pre-mature (more on that later), but VocalTec's initial popularity and media attention inspired a generation of entrepreneurs (I was blessed to be one of them, co-founding Delta Three, one of the world's first commercial VoIP service providers) and helped to eventually revolutionize the international telecommunications industry.
Part of our pre-maturity was that computers and networks were not ready for VoIP yet, so we mostly created a wholesale business providing rock-bottom rates to the international telecom players. Our customers were companies like AT&T, Cable and Wireless, Duetche Telecom and many others. A few years later computers and networks were ready for the launch of Skype and other consumer players, which finalized the complete destruction of the international pricing system.
I emphasize the international aspect because that is where the real revolution occurred. Recall that in 1995 the average price of a phone call from Tel Aviv to New York was $2 a minute, London to NY was $1 a minute.
Today international phone calls between most places are somewhere between free and pennies a minute, mainly due to the pressure of VoIP. Today Skype alone carries over 25% of the international voice traffic, as measured by Telegeography.
Over the past few years the formerly unconquered fields of mobile phones, tablets are slowly giving way to the ongoing VoIP wave (given the processing power of smartphones and mobile broadband). Companies like Viber, WhatsApp, and yes, even Skype have been adopted by hundreds of millions of mobile users, accelerating the next major upheaval, which is the move from expensive mobile plans to reasonable "all-you-can-eat" plans, with basically unlimited phone/SMS/Internet. That together with WiFi becoming more and more a part of the assumed digital fabric of life, means that more and more of the time we are "on-line," and the dreams of those of use who fantasized about Internet based communications are becoming more real.
But we still have a long way to go.
Inspired by my good friend Jeff Pulver, I recently co-founded with him a start-up (called Zula) to capitalize on the changing communications landscape, and bring to market a product that will introduce some joy and delight in how we initiate and maintain communications relationships -- and as much of that plays out these days over mobile devices, we have adopted a "mobile-first" product development strategy.
What we have discovered is that while much has changed, when working on mobile we still very much need to remember that one of the states of connectivity is off-line, and that there is a wide spectrum of states of connectivity and quality. When trying to design a product (that uses VoIP) that simply works we have to overcome many existing limitations of VoIP. We have checked all the leading VoIP products, and while some certainly work better than others, VoIP over mobile reminds me of the early days of VoIP on fixed internet. Only we ARE closer to our dreams.
I remember many years ago an Ericsson engineer telling me that people don't understand how much technical "magic" is involved in passing a live call from one cell to another, so that when people speed down a highway they can continue talking uninterrupted. Obviously this is on top of the core magic of wireless communications. Add to that challenge the data network, and trying to run real time communications apps on top of that network...and what is simple a "phone call" becomes the convergence of multiple streams of modern magic.
In the "old" days when you picked up a phone you heard something called dial tone -- which for my kids is almost a foreign concept. When we first started to commercialize VoIP we felt we need to fake some dial tone so people would think we were a real phone company. The same goes for hearing the ring-ring when calling someone. Today we choose what to hear, if we hear anything at all, during the time that the called party is notified that someone wants to talk to them.
I have been told many times over the past few years that the "young people" do not make phone calls anymore, that they use text for most of their conversations. I don't think this is only true amongst young people, as we all use email and other forms of textual communication to take the place of some of what we formerly could only accomplish with a phone call.
But that does not mean voice (and it's richer cousin, video) is dead. Far from it. But as VoIP enters prime time, and is looked upon not as a cheap/free alternative but as the core pathway for communications, we are challenged to keep the magic alive, and make the voice experience (what we use to call a "phone call") not only as good as it was, and is, but even better.
Even way back when it was mainly a wholesale replacement business, I preferred the term IP (Internet Protocol) Communications over Internet Telephony, or even Voice over IP, VoIP, which is how many techies still refer to it. IP Communications means we truly move the conversation, whether in the form of written text, voice, or video (or some combination thereof) to the internet, which today is reaching further and further across the globe.
The world is moving very fast, and we need to move faster if we want to stay ahead and develop products that finally allow people to do what was formerly impractical and impossible.
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