Category Archives: Web/Tech

Practical Dreamers

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I was at a meeting this morning where the notion of "Practical Dreamers" came up.  It was proposed that practical dreamers, when they are 100% committed, become extraordinary leaders.

I think this is particularly true for entrepreneurs.  Dreaming is the first requirement; revolutionary ideas are products of creative thinking and dreaming.  But you need to be practical.  If you possess both abilities, then you add 100% commitment and the combination becomes a recipe for success.

I know this sounds a bit cliche and obvious.  But it made me think about the entrepreneurial successes I have witnessesd in my career and without a single exception, they each had all three elements.

Future of Filmed Entertainment

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Emrecan Dogan has kicked off what promises to be an insightful series on his observations and thoughts on the three areas of filmed entertainment content:

Content Owners
Intermediaries (’gatekeepers’ or ‘middlemen)
End-user Platforms

He's tackling a fascinating area with an enormmous market side, technology attacks from all directions and complex micro-economic forces in play.  I look forward to his thoughts.

Authentic Enthusiasm

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There exist some cliches on usability – rules of thumb on design, fonts, color palette, etc.  Then you come across very successful web properties that ignore these entirely (Craigslist and Paypal come to mind).  How come?  What's the magic ingredient in these sometimes ugly services that leads to success.

This has been an issue on my mind for a while.  Today, reading Albert' Wenger's post, something crystallized:

Hospitality is the “humanizing” element.  Visitors have to feel
appreciated, they have to find their time respected and they have to
find pleasure in the transaction. Achieving that for USHG starts with hiring employees based on their HQ,
their “hospitality quotient,” which Danny defined as “how much pleasure
someone derives from providing pleasure to others.”

Danny is the restaurateur Danny Meyer and relays his experience in the hospitality industry.  Albert found it relevant to the web industry but it made him think about the hiring decisions in web companies.

However, I think it applies to the experience the web site provides, as well.  If a website makes the user feel like it's trying really hard to be useful, then the user will forgive (or ignore) many design or usability flaws.  Authenticity can shine through on the web where you don't have face to face interactions.

Maybe Authentic Enthusiasm is the Hospitality Quotient of the web.

Angels Charging Startups

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Jason Calacanis is waging a war against angel investor groups charging entrepreneurs to hear their business plans.  I agree with him that this is a very unsavory practice and support him in his crusade.  I am not aware of any angel investor groups in the Turkish market who charge startups to hear pitches, but please let me know if you are know of one.

UPDATE:  Fred's post reminds me of another variant:  The startup coach.  We have a few of these here in Turkey.  If you are thinking of spending your precious cash on one, be very careful in evaluating the merits of the coach you are about to hire.

Twitter a Utility?

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Bo Peabody recently had an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Times (via PEHub), titled "Twitter.Org?", where he suggested:

I launched the social networking site Tripod in 1995. By 1998, it was
the eighth-largest site on the Web. But Tripod was never a successful
business. Social networks aren't great places to advertise. You can't
charge users for their services. And they never gain enough momentum to
survive in the stock market. Indeed, no social network has ever made it
as a public company.
…
Instead of expecting profits that won't materialize, the
entrepreneurial community should instead operate social networks as
not-for-profit organizations. Wikipedia has grown phenomenally with a
not-for-profit business model, and while Wikipedia has its problems,
its fate is in the collective hands of its users rather than in the
hands of media companies or the stock market. Facebook and Twitter
should enjoy the same comfort.

Bo Peabody is a social media veteran and the article is a personal one.  It's explicitly rooted in his experience.  His point can be valid if you take social networks and user-generated content from a media perspective.  So I would agree with him in the case of the likes of MySpace or Bebo.

However, he points out Twitter and Facebook specifically, and there, I disagree with him.  This blog has always seen Twitter and Facebook as attempts at owning the identity layer of the internet.  Until Facebook, there was no meta data on the identites of internet users.  That's been changing rapidly over the last couple of years, and especially last year, Twitter has emerged as a contender in the identity layer – one that perhaps has a thinner layer of data on the users, but can grow even faster due to its simplicity.

I also find the notion of a not-for-profit, or utility-like, Facebook or Twitter very interesting and worthwhile. However, my reasoning would not be due to their limited profit generating ability, as proposed by Peabody, but the idea that something as powerful as the identity layer of the internet perhaps ought to be a public-domain asset, just like the internet itself.

Turkish Facebook Growing Fast

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Two weeks ago I wrote about the enormous size of Facebook's Turkish user population and the lack of attention that Turkish web development community was paying to it.  There have been two related developments so I thought they warrant a mention.

First, Webrazzi reports that there will be a Facebook Developer Garage event in Istanbul this weekend.  This should be interesting to all web developers.

Second, Inside Facebook is reporting that Turks are the fastest growing European nationality on Facebook, with over a million new users in September, and a total user base of almost 14.5 million.

Any and all web companies in Turkay should be paying attention to this figure and developing a Facebook strategy for their users (and probably attending the Developer Garage event).

Craigslist with $1/ad

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Seth has an idea:

Some things are better when they're not free.

If Craigslist charged a dollar for every listing, what would happen?

…

Money creates a sort of friction. In the digital economy, magical
things can happen when there is no friction. You can scale to infinity.
On the other hand, sometimes you want friction.

I buy this.  I agree that some friction introduced to CL would probably improve the much-maligned user experience significantly and thus its utility.

However, sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the friction you are about to introduce to the system.

CL is extremely liquid because it is free.  You introduce cost and all of a sudden, liquidity starts going down.  Not that legitimate users would mind the $1/ad cost.  But there are other transaction costs that will inevitably enter the picture:  who processes these payments?  can all users access the payment methods?  can most?  you get the issue…

I suspect the scale and liquidity of CL is one of those magical things that happened because CL is free.

Facebook and the Turkish Developer Community

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Facebook-turk

As of today, there are 11,818,880 users on Facebook who live in Turkey and are over the age of 18.  This figure is according to the self-service ad module on Facebook.  I certainly concede there are many duplicate accounts in this figure, but I think it would be safe to assume that there are over 8m unique Turkish users of Facebook.  In fact, comScore estimates 5.5m average daily visitors for the month of August 2009.

This is enormous traffic.  To put this in perspective, MSN Turkey estimated the Turkish internet user population at 12-14m in August 2006.  As far as the Turkish market is concerned, Facebook is now nearly as big as the entire internet was just three years ago.

As an venture capital investor focused on the Turkish market, this makes me extremely excited.  It should surprise no one that almost everyday, I receive a business plan for a Facebook app-driven venture that plans to capitalize on the strong engagement Facebook enjoys in Turkey.

Or should it?

The previous paragraph is a lie.  I am amazed at the way Turkish internet developers are ignoring this enormous potential.  When you look at the most popular apps on Facebook, there is not a single Turkish app.  The same is true for app developers.

Two weeks ago, a Turkish app named Senin İçin jumped to the top of fastest growing apps list, with an MAU of 681K.  This week, they are nowhere to be seen, having only grown to 815K.  Very notable, though, is the presence of another app, also named Senin İçin! (BTW; I thought FB would filter out apps with the same/similar names.)

I think Facebook represents a phenomenal opportunity for Turkish developers.  Facebook's growth in Turkey has proven that viral growth works here, with the right incentives and hooks.  Zynga is showing everyone that you can attain revenues thru FB apps.  I would bet that at least 5% of Zynga's reported $100m+ revenues are coming from Turkey.  How many Turkish internet companies can boast of similar revenue traction?

I will be keenly watching to see if the Turkish developer community wakes up to this opportunity.

Image credit:  Taylanbey

European Tech Tour – Web & Mobility Summit

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ETT_Logo_Home This year I am on the selection committee for the ETT Web & Mobility Summit.  My focus will be mainly on the startups from Turkey and the region and I am looking forward to helping some of the great companies that have emerged from our geography get more European exposure.

If you are an entrepreneur, I strongly suggest applying to present at the summit.

I also have a guest blog, in Turkish, on Webrazzi on the topic.

Ideal Term Sheet

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There was a post on AVC last week (inspired by a post by Chris Dİxon) on what type of issues are important on early stage VC term sheets.  Both posts and the comments are must-reads for any entrepreneur looking to raise venture capital.

On the heels of this conversation, came a draft first round term sheet published by TheFunded Founder Institute, laying out what they see as standard, acceptable terms.  It's great to see that a FFI, which specifically supports founders, has put out terms that are fair.  I think this document can be a starting point in many funding situations.