After writing sporadically about startups and related issues on The Digitalyst blog I've launched an online discussion forum called HonchoTalk to give entrepreneurs a place to ask questions, get answers, make comments, find resources and otherwise interact with their peers. Rather than reiterate why I started HonchoTalk, what the benefits are, and how to register as a member (which is both free and easy), I'll just refer anyone interested to http:www.honchotalk.com.
I'll probably still post an occasional article here, but for the most part I'll be focusing on promoting HonchoTalk, moderating discussions and figuring out how to make it more helpful to anyone starting, managing or developing a business.
Please take a visit HonchoTalk and take a look.

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Jerry Colonna was an investor, through his firm Flatiron, and Board member of one of my companies, Mainspring Communications. When we approached Charlie Lax about an investment, then at Softbank ,he wisely recommended Jerry, who had extensive experience in the computer trade press, which made a great match for Mainspring's original business model: be the MSDN (Microsoft Developers Network) for the Internet. I'm reminded of Jerry and Mainspring this morning as I just read that TechTarget - which is a much better executed version of Mainspring - just went public.
Jerry was a VC during the height of the dotcom boom and he used to test people's Internet business ideas with a simple question: “What's the analog analog?” Meaning, what in the real, physical world is analogous to the business you are trying to build on the Internet?
With Facebook in the news for opening up their platform to any and all developers I'm reminded of what a great answer Mark Zuckerberg would have had to Jerry's question: Facebook's analog analog was the student directory printed and distributed to students by schools like Harvard, where Facebook started.
While I'm not sure that Jerry's question is still the acid test for the validity of an Internet business model - though eBay and Amazon were great exemplars - what's the analog analog of MySpace or even Google? But if you do have an new Internet business idea applying the Colonna test is one of many you should probably apply before committing resources to your bright new idea.

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I used to use Microsoft as the classic example of how startups succeed: find a niche and dominate it, then expand from there. (MS started out selling programming languages, then DOS, then Word, then Office - then world domination). Of course, it didn't hurt that they invented the OEM software model in the process.
But Facebook is my new exemplar. Mark Zuckerberg did a brilliant job of starting out with Harvard, then the Ivies, then anyone with a .edu address, then carefully opening up to select corporations and finally to anyone with pulse and email account. Most entrepreneurs I meet are always afraid to focus too tightly and want to do too much, too soon.
As the saying goes, more companies die from indigestion than starvation.

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On page 15 of today's Wall Street Journal, Michael Malone has an article entitled simply “Steve Jobs.” Now this is the opinion page, but I still think Mr. Malone has a few major misreadings of the music industry and Apple's role in it. While I enjoyed Malone's Infinite Loop, one of many books I've read about Apple, I think he's a bit off the mark in this piece.
First of all I think its a bit of an overstatement to say that by 2003 “the entire music industry was on the brink of disaster.” The music industry has been a slow motion train wreck, not a bursting bubble. Large scale piracy, by criminal groups, not individuals; competition from DVDs and videogames for the consumer's dollar; and competition from the Internet for the consumer's attention have all been eroding CD sales by 10% to 20% a year for several years. The fact that you can very easily copy a CD on virtually any PC for pennies and in a few minutes hasn't helped. And, of course, the many descendants of Napster have made illegal downloading a way of life for college students and others.
To say that Apple … “had given tacit approval to illegal downloading with its notorious “Rip, Mix, Burn” advertising campaign” is just plain wrong. “Rip” means to copy digital files from a CD to a PC's hard drive, “Burn” means to write a CD from digital files stored on the PC. And “Mix” has nothing do do with downloading! That is not to say that encouraging people to rip CDs to fill up their iPods by borrowing friends CD rather than buying their own might not have cost the industry a few dollars, but to claim that “Rip, Mix and Burn” gives tacit approval to illegal downloading is misinformed. If anything it gives tacit approval to illegal CD copying.
And it is not clear that “Then in rode Steve Jobs to the rescue.” Let's do the math. According to Malone, Apple has sold 2.5 billion songs on iTunes and 100 million iPods. That equates to 25 songs per iPod or roughly 2 CDs worth! I'll leave it to those more sophisticated in mathematical modeling than I to figure out the mean lifetime of an iPod given its launch in 2001, but no how matter how you model it the conclusion has to be that the majority of songs on all those iPods are not coming from iTunes but from CDs and/or the Internet.
According to Nielsen Soundscan, 2006 album sales totaled 646,400,000 . Assuming 12 tracks per album that totals 7,756,800,000 tracks compared to the 581,900,000 digital tracks legally downloaded. In other words total digital downloads - iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster et al - equaled about about 8% of the total tracks purchased on CD!
Malone goes on to miss the most important point Steve Jobs made in his argument to lift DRM from digital tracks: CDs are and always have been (with a very, very tiny number of exceptions) DRM-free themselves. So why handicap a nascent industry with DRM when the legacy industry doesn't even practice it? At least in this paragraph Malone admits that iTunes represents only 3% of the total songs on the average iPod, though he does not cite a source for that data.
Finally to add insult to injury, Malone states that EMI's DRM-free MP3 files at twice the sound quality (256 mbps vs. 128 mbps) are “… the first mass market improvement in music fidelity since the death of the LP.” While there is a hard core of audiophiles, musicians and sound engineers who believe that the LP is sonically superior to the CD, I'll bet my last CD that none of them would maintain that 256 mbps, which might equate to 20% of the bits on an uncompressed CD track, is an “improvement in music fidelity” over the LP. And that's not to mention SACD and DVD-Audio, which while both market failures, arguably provide an improvement in sound quality over the CD and even the LP.
To cap everything off, Malone asks what's to keep Apple from going into the music business itself! Plenty! But that's subject for another post.

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I have a few tangential connections to author Paul D. Lehrman: I was the co-founder of Thomson/Course Technology, the publisher of Paul's book, studied computer music back in the days of the IBM 360, and worked with a number of Boston and national bands as a soundman in the early 70's. Plus we were both avid readers of the magazine Recording Engineer/Producer. I've been reading Paul's columns for years in the local Boston press and was thrilled to discover Insider Audio, a 400+ page plus treasure trove of his columns from Mix magazine - which did not disappoint. If you have a serious interest in music and audio, buy this book. Paul's range is amazing, from a great article/interview with Tom Lehrer to the inside story of the Concert for George, you'll be informed and entertained. He does a great job of framing each article with a preface and afterword, that puts these articles in context. And anyone who can get a cover blurb from a member of the Firesign Theater is a hero to me! Now Paul, how about a collection of your articles that didn't appear in Mix?

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It’s an unfortunate fact of life that those of us charged with hiring for startups and fast growth companies often receive so many resumes that we start looking for ways to reject each new resume that hits our screens.
So for those of you who would really rather keep collecting unemployment or do your own startup, here are some tips for getting your resume rejected so you can keep doing what you are doing without being rudely interrupted by someone wanting to hire you.
1. Start of with a summary or objective that’s clearly not a fit for the company. If your objective is to join a leading company in the thingamabob industry where you can put your newly minted MBA to good use that’s a good way to get rejected if you are applying for a job at a startup that builds whatchmacallits, not thingamabobs.
2. Sloppiness is always good for a quick rejection. Typos, ugly formatting, poor grammar, poor quality photocopies – these are all good ways to catch someone’s eye quickly and get your resume sent to the circular file without further ado.
3. Looking like a job hopper can keep you couch surfing in comfort. An excellent technique here is to highlight your flightiness by using months along with the years of employment. While it’s true that job loyalty isn’t what it used to be averaging a new job every year can help you get to the reject pile quickly.
4. Turning the reader into a detective can be a helpful way to make sure no one pays much attention to your resume. Why applicants neglect to explain what the companies did that they worked for – as if everyone has heard of Foobar Consolidated or Widgets International – continues to baffle me. Not taking the time and effort to provide short summaries of the businesses of your former employers won’t ensure your resume gets rejected, but it can be a good tie-breaker.
5. Adding a section about your interests or hobbies that seem at real variance with the job you’re are applying for is a subtle, rarely used but effective way to keep collecting that unemployment check. If your hobbies are reading, listening to music, playing solitaire, running, and collecting rare hub caps, make sure you highlight those when applying for a job that demands team work and relationship building.
6. Focusing on your job activities rather than the results you achieved is a good way to put off many recruiters. This can work really well if you go into laborious detail by reiterating everything you were ever asked to do and are fastidious about avoiding mentioning how well you did it.
7. Avoiding quantitative data in jobs than are measured quantitatively is usually a good red flag. If your resume includes sales positions or P & L responsibility make sure you omit any information about making quota or what financial results you achieved. That should create enough doubt in the recruiters mind to keep you out of the interview pile.
If you are just too lazy to put in the hard work to get your resume rejected, there is another, easier way to make sure you never get called for that dreaded interview – craft a truly atrocious cover letter. That can ensure your resume never even gets looked at. But that’s a subject for another post.

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I've been an avid reader of Steve Levy's previous books, including Insanely Great: The Life and Times of the Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything, Artificial Life, and Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. So I was looking forward to The Perfect Thing, How the iPod shuffles commerce, culture and coolness after reading an excerpt in Wired.
However, the book is largely a puff piece and paean to Steve Jobs and Apple and adds little to the original article. In addition, there are a few gaffes I found surprising from such a knowledgeable and experienced author. On page 62 Steve writes:
Nonetheless, part of the enjoyment of owning an iPod certainly seems to be the cachet of owning it. It's a modern twist on the old canard that no one is fired for buying shares in IBM - no one is branded uncool for owning a iPod.
Well, canard or not - and its arguable that it was a truism not a canard back in the sixties and seventies - it's “no one is fired for buying IBM” - meaning IBM products, not shares! This saying referred to IT managers who are notoriously - and with good reason - risk averse and the fact that given IBM's virtual monopoly on enterprise IT prior to being dethroned by Microsoft, it was a safe bet to buy IBM.
On page 97, Steve writes about Jimmy Iovine a renowned audio engineer and producer:
As a guy who knew the purpose of every solenoid on a studio soundboard, Iovine was not scared of technology.
As someone who spent a fair amount of time behind soundboards myself and around a lot of sound engineers, I never heard any refer to the faders, knob and other controls as solenoids. A solenoid is a current-carrying coil of wire that acts like a magnet when a current passes through it. The most common usage is as shorthand for a solenoid switch, more often found in cars than in studio consoles.
On page 122, Steve shortchanges the playing time of the standard commercial CD by 14 minutes when he writes:
In the 1990's, the CD ripped the needle across the surface of the LP age, and suddenly artists had a full hour to fill, with no natural breaking point when you flipped over the record.
Not to speak of the fact that the compact disk was in fact introduced in 1982, not in the 90's as Steve implies.
And yet again:
That hour exceeded the available time and attention span of most listeners …”
Steve is correct, but does the reader a real disservice with his incomplete description of the iPod's syncing function on page 222:
An iPod is essentially a satellite of the iTunes software appliation; when you dock the device to the computer, the iPod checks the changes made to iTunes since the last time you docked and updates the iPod to mirror the current collection on your computer.
As any savvy iPod user knows, while this may be the default behavior of iTunes, the user can defeat this feature, which is important to know if you have an iPod with relatively small storage and you add a lot of new music to iTunes on your computer.
Ok, so a few nits in 200 + page book doesn't seem so bad and probably wouldn't be if the book itself was anything more than an expanded magazine article that seemed more likely to have been authored by Apple's PR agency than an experienced and well respected tech author like Steve Levy. Steve, I think you have been spending a little bit too much time in Steve Jobs' reality distortion field lately.

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There are probably dozens if not hundreds of top ten lists for candidates interviewing for a job, but in the spirit of Spinal Tap, here’s my top eleven list, based on recently interviewing candidates for The Director of Operations at the Daily Jolt. The tips are ordered from mundane operational aspects like dress code to how to conduct the interview, not from most important to least important.
1. Bring extra copies of your resume and cover letter. Often extra people are invited into the interview process who will need your documents or the interviewer may have even misplaced your paperwork.
2. Get there a few minutes early. It gives you a chance to observe the atmosphere of the office and possibly chat with people there before the interview, which can give you more of a feel for the company.
3. If the company doesn’t tell you what their dress code is, don’t assume it is either formal or business casual, call ahead and ask. It can be uncomfortable for you and the interviewer if you are in jeans and she’s in a suit, or vice versa.
4. If possible, find out the titles and most importantly the roles of the people who will be interviewing you – that will help put their questions in context and enable you to provide more salient answers.
5. Bring a pad and pen, or your Tablet PC, if you have one. You will want to take notes on what you learn from the interviewing process. It is surprising how often interviewees turn up empty-handed, without copies of their resumes or anything to take notes with.
6. Pay appropriate attention to everyone in the room. Often candidates will lock onto the most senior person in the room and address their answers to her or him, despite who asked the questions. This creates a poor impression, especially with the more junior people!
7. Promptly follow up any interviews, phone calls or other interchanges. Usually an email is best for this purpose. Following up gives you a chance to make a positive impression, perhaps make a point you missed during the interview process and ask a question or two. It also demonstrates good manners and attention to detail, which are usually valued by employers.
8. Research the company! It is surprising how many candidates don’t follow this basic rule. If you are interested enough in a company to apply for a job there, invest the time in studying their web site, reading the bios of the management team, studying their competitors and the company’s history.
9. Keep your answers to interviewer’s questions as short as possible, but no shorter. Doing so will you give both you and the interviewer the opportunity to cover more ground. You can always offer to elaborate an answer by saying something like, “I could go into more detail about other international experience I’ve had if that would be helpful.” Interviewers hate long-winded candidates!
10. Ask questions about the job and the company! Asking a question gives you an opportunity to learn whether or not the job is right for you as well as the chance to demonstrate your knowledge of the company and insight into their market. Many interviewers heavily weigh the quality of the candidate’s questions in their overall assessment
11. Finally, if the company doesn’t give you an assignment as part of the interview process, like writing a short critique of a competitor’s product, volunteer to do so. Employers are looking for staff who take initiative and who will go the extra mile. Volunteering for an assignment is a great way to demonstrate those characteristics and the reaction to your work will also give you valuable information about whether the job and the company are right for you.

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Ray Ozzie was one of many very talented software engineers at Software Arts, Inc. in the early 80's.
Ray worked on Software Arts' proprietary programming language - IL, for implementation language. Since I was responsible for product management and IL wasn't a product, my path rarely, if ever, crossed with his. However, there are two things I learned from him, or rather from observing his early career.
When Ray joined Software Arts I recall someone asking him why he joined the company and he responded that he had worked on four products at Data General and none of them ever reached the market. Ray found that frustrating. He wanted to see his work used by customers and felt that would happen at a small company like Software Arts. This was one of the first times I realized that small companies have some competitive advantages over big companies. Engineers tend to be motivated by peer and customer recognition and a small company can provide more of than a vrey large companies with thousands of employees. On the other hand, no small company can afford to develop multiple products that never reach the market - there aren't the resources to do that. Of course, the irony of this story is that although Software Arts released at least one product written in IL - TK!Solver - no customer would have been aware of that fact.
When Ray left Software Arts for Lotus I heard that it was because he wanted to work at home a few days a week and Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston wouldn't allow him to do that. So Ray approached Mitch Kapor at Lotus and he cut a deal with Mitch. Ray would develop Symphony, the follow-on to Lotus 1-2-3, in exchange for Mitch funding a company that Ray would start to develop a product he had been thinking about for years. That company was Iris Associates and that product was Notes. I don't know if any of this is true, but I took it as a lesson: not all employees are ceated equal and sometimes you have to treat supestars differently. Managng sofware engineers is similar to managing talent in the arts - music, film, television - it's a specialiazed skill and aptititude that they don't teach you in business school. Bill Gates has certainly always had a real eye for talent and an ability to attract talent to Microsoft. The only surprise is how long it took him to attract Ray Ozzie.

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For the first time in several years I find myself in the position of hiring manager. Beyond specific skills and experience I tend to look foer the following qualities in new hires:
Enthusiam
Intelligence
Initiative
Persistence
Bias for action
Sense of humor
Ability to work as part of a team
Attention to detail
Ability to inspire others
Articulate
Adaptable
Responsiveness
High marks on these intangibles can often outweigh typical job description-type requirements. I find in startups requirements often change, but enthusiastic, self-motivated, intelligent people will succeed in spite of or because of the changes.

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