FlyWheel – The Blog of Withers Davis

The World Cup is the best international sporting event in the world, hands down.  The Olympics don’t even come close.  In the Olympics, 90% of the sports basically only exist because the Olympics exist.  Platform diving, curling, biathlon, come on…

Unfortunately, the organization that rules soccer (football) is barbaric and idiotic with their rule decisions.  FIFA needs to follow the NBA and the NFL and tinker with the rules to make the game better.   The NFL and NBA try changes out and sometimes repeal them (NFL instant replay, NBA zone defense ban) to make the game better. Soccer should do the same.  Here are three changes FIFA can EASILY make that will make soccer better.

#1 – Goal Line Camera: This one is a complete no-brainer.  Put a camera on the goal that can tell if the ball has crossed the plane.  If it does then a light goes off.  Hockey has had this for years, there is no excuse for soccer not to have it.  A goal in soccer is the biggest thrill in all of sports, and is more important than a basket, touchdown, or run.  The disallowed England goal is an embarrassment to the sport.

#2 – Post Game Review of Cards: In soccer if you receive either a red card or two yellow cards in the first 4 games, you miss the following game.  FIFA should review every card after each game to see if it was truly deserved. Cards are a very, very serious blow to players, and can seriously impact teams.  Chile had to play without two of their best players against the mighty Brazil, which is no small hurdle to overcome.  With only a single referee on the field, the awarding of yellow and red cards is incredibly subjective and difficult.  Add to that the ridiculous propensity for diving in soccer, and you are left with a veritable glut of undeserved cards and banned players.  The Brazilian man-boy Kaka received a red card when an Ivory Coast player ran into his back and took a dive.  There is no reason why FIFA can’t review cards after the fact to see if they were really deserved.  The NBA does this for technical fouls and it works very well.

#3 – “Injured” Players MUST Leave the Field for Two Minutes: Soccer is a pretty safe sport – especially compared to American football or baseball.  However, if you never saw any of these sports before you would think it is the most dangerous of all, with all of the writhing soccer players do in the attempt to entice the ref to give fouls. If a player is injured enough to stop play, they should be required to sit out for at least 2 minutes.  I’ve seen NFL players walk off the field after tearing an ACL, but soccer players writhe, wince, and whine with the slightest contact.  This slows the game and is a general disgrace.  With the two-minutes off rule, if you are faking it, then your team goes a man down in the meantime.  In American football if you are injured in the last two minutes your team HAS to take a timeout.  Funny, that almost never happens.

Each of these rules would be easy to implement and would not slow the game.  If the rule doesn’t work, then you could easily repeal it.  Keeping things the same for ‘tradition’ is idiotic.  Get your head out of your ass FIFA.

Today I would like to share with you all, what I think, is the best business concept I have learned in the last year.

I present you – The Lean Startup.

The concept of The Lean Startup was first coined by entrepreneur Eric Ries in 2008. The core idea behind it is that it is basically impossible for an startup to know, up front, if their idea will really work. For every successful company out there, there are dozens that failed. The Lean Startup seeks to prevent those failures from happening by embracing customer feedback and product iteration.

In the traditional business model, the entrepreneur spends a lot of time planning and building before launching the business or product. Once the product is released the entrepreneur keeps the product relatively static and then focuses on marketing to sell the product. Customer feedback is accepted, but is generally not the focus of future business operations. Think for example a restaurant that opens and never changes the menu. They may offer specials, promotions, and advertisements, but they never really change the core product.

In the Lean Startup the difference is that customer feedback and iteration have significantly more weight throughout the growth process. Instead of starting with building the lean startup starts by asking the question ‘What do our customers want?’ Entrepreneurs in Lean Startups spend a lot of time talking to customers and learning their problems and desires. They then build a VERY BASIC version of a product and launch it. Ideally they will try to sell this initial product, but sometimes they give it away for free. This product, called The Minimum Viable Product, is then used as a basis to gain valuable information about the market, the product, and the customers. Maybe everyone hates it, maybe everyone loves it. Most likely though, some parts work, some parts are missing, and some suck. Regardless of the outcome, the concept of getting the basic product out there significantly helps to guide future strategic decisions.

Regarding iteration, the Lean Startup seeks to iterate as fast and often as possible. The rationale is that only through iteration and testing can one really understand the market. The more you iterate the more you learn, and, over time, the more successful you will be.

A serious challenge of the Lean Startup is that our minds have been conditioned over the years to think of products as ‘finished’. Until the creation of the internet, most products were indeed ‘finished’. Books, movies, tests, papers – all of these are ‘finished’ – with little or no post-completion iteration. With technology, and especially the web, it is possible to change an iterate faster and cheaper. This gives entrepreneurs the ability to try different ideas to see what works for the customers.

OK – well I hope you found this informative.  What do you think of the idea?

Here are some resources for more information on Lean Startups:

Startups Lessons Learned – Blog by Eric Reis

The Four Steps to the Epiphany – Book by Steve Blank

New York Times Article

Buenos Aires Lean Startups Group

More About Me: Over the past 2 years, as the founder of the web design company Uplifted, I have been involved with at least 25 startups – and seen many successes and many flops. Prior to that I spent 9+ years working as an IT consultant for incredibly large (and very non-lean) US Government programs, including the 2010 US Census.

Uplifted sponsored the Buenos Aires Lean Startups conference in April and created the Lean Startups Buenos Aires community.  Working in the startup culture is one of the most enjoyable things that I have ever immersed myself in – and also one of the most frustrating. From an intellectual standpoint though, the learning is invaluable.  The Lean Startup concept is just one of many fascinating parts of living in the startup culture.

Hubspot - Twitter Growth

For all of its hype over the last few years, I don’t see how Twitter can possibly thrive going forward. To me it is all hype and early adopter craziness, and unfortunately it is getting killed by my one dollar vs two dollar argument…

Would you rather have one dollar or two dollars?

The answer of course is two dollars.

Or, in this case…

Would you rather use Twitter or Facebook to post updates?

Hello, McFly… Facebook of course!

In the long run Facebook wins out BIG TIME.  Twitter growth is slowing dramatically, and Facebook is adding features left and right that in the end will crush it.

Why should I waste my time logging into Twitter when I can do the same thing on Facebook, reach more people, and do a ton of other stuff like sign up for events, look for bikini pictures of ‘friends’, or post links that actually have thumbnails.

REAL PEOPLE DON’T TWEET.  Sorry Twitter-fanatics, but me thinks you are screwed.

One interesting thing that could happen would be if Google, Apple, or (gahst) Microsoft bought Twitter and joined it with other existing services as Dave McClure points out.  But even if that happens I still think Twitter is dead.

It never was really that cool anyway, right?

Theory: Every small business should start with a prototype.

If you are going to start a business, the best way to get it off the ground is to build a basic prototype first.   Cut everything extra out, get down to the bare minimum, build your initial products, then try to sell them.  Most people that I have dealt with get this wrong.  They focus first on non-critical issues like furniture, equity arrangements, financial projections, branding, fonts/colors, etc.

OK OK – I know you are saying, well we have to figure out who gets what before starting, or it could be chaos.  I say bullshit to that. Spend that time first on the product and on the sales pitch.  Talk to potential customers.  See if you do have a viable business that could actually work.  If you can get some initial (paying) clients you’ll have powerful information about your future business that can be used to help figure all the other stuff out.

Setting up a productive work environment is one of the easiest ways to get productive.

We’ve recently moved the Uplifted web design team to a new location with a our friends over at EasyBroker, a real estate software company.  So, its adios to working from home – and I couldn’t be happier.

Since moving from the house to the office I have worked longer days and weekends.  Part of this is out of necessity (we’ve got a lot of work) and part of it is because I’m able to separate my life from work.  Now that I have a real desk (not the kitchen table) I’ve found it’s easier to focus on work when I want to, without distraction.  When you work from home there are simply more distractions to take your focus.  Be in the laundry, friends, cats, bills, dishes, etc etc.

For me distractions are my biggest source of personal frustrations.  I know there are things to do, and by trying to get them all done I get none of them done. I find this is magnified when I do things at home.  There was even a study that showed multitasking lowers your IQ…

So, personally I have found my most productive times are at a desk, with a job at hand.

If you are in BA, you can check out areatres – a flexible office space in Palermo, Buenos Aires Argentina.  I used to work there and it is a great place to get focused and get stuff done.

The other day I had lunch with my new buddy Maria Macdonald and we talked about how we’re going about building our respective brands.  Maria runs a pretty damn cool Spanish language online magazine/mailing list called YoQueVos that is based around Buenos Aires.  Think Daily Candy meets Buenos Aires.

After a lengthy review of my dating life in Argentina we started chatting about how we find inspiration. And for me, books are one of my best ways to find inspiration and understand how to grow my business.  Soooooo – I agreed to write a list of my favorite books that relate to building a business.  Here you are:

The Four Hour Work Week (Tim Ferriss): I’m giving Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week my number 1 spot because of the immediate impact it had on my life.  Reading this book was part of the inspiration for me quitting my job and moving to Buenos Aires.  Tim’s ideas of elimination noise, separating the quest for money from work, and truly defining life desires and dreams are very powerful and almost ‘duh’.

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicolas Taleb): Taleb’s masterpiece on the impact of improbable events should be read by anyone that invests in the stock market, owns a home, or starts a business.  Basically, the gist of this one is that improbable events have enormous implications on the world and are almost impossible to predict.  Randomness rules the world, so make sure you are prepared to deal with it.

Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand): Had to put this one high on the list, even though it is SUPER long.  Ayn Rand has given me inspiration for years.  Right now I am giving this a second go.  Very long and meandering, but to me one of those books that honestly changed my life. She does a great job with the characters here – how can you not love a book that includes a strong woman running a company who also enjoys sex, a badass steel CEO that moonlights in his laboratory, and umm yeah, pirates.

Getting Real (37signals):  This book was published last year by the company 37signals.  The core concepts are understanding your users and keeping things simple.  While it deals primarily with software development the concepts can be applied to almost any business.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR (David Meerman Scott):  Marketing is undergoing a revolution from slick commercials towards actual useful (free) content.  Those companies that understand this can really make some big splashes (think Mentos’ geyser videos).

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (Jack Trout): This is great little book that helps to understand the basics of marketing and competition.  I read this in 1 day and it immediately helped me understand the seemingly complex world of marketing.

Never Eat Alone (Keith Ferrazzi): Demystifies the supposed ‘work/life’ barrier.  Your friends should be your business partners and your business partners should be your friends.  Ferrazzi says that one’s personal network is the biggest business strengths you can have.  Case in point – over 80% of Uplifted’s business comes from friends and referrals from friends.

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Biography): Ben was the freaking man.  Among other things he was involved in setting up the first post office, capturing electricity, writing the Declaration of Independence, and winning the American Revolutionary War.  He is a great example of execution, marketing, and hard work all rolled into one fascinating story.

I saw the future at the Carsonified ‘Future of Web Design’ conference this week in New York.  Graphic Designer Joshua Davis gave a presentation on how he makes amazingly beautiful art using Adobe Flash and ActionScript (programs that enable designers to create movies/moving images).

Joshua Davis from Etapes on Vimeo.

What Josh does though is more than flashy computer art – he uses the computer as both medium and method. Like a painter of old, he wields 1s and 0s to create digital gorgeousness. The difference is that his tools are so much more powerful than a brush, oil, and paper. Using programming, artistic vision, failure, and iteration he creates amazingly beautiful still images of programs in motion. The use of iteration is especially interesting, because iterating it is so easy and cheap with a computer. Within seconds a completely new version of the art can be rendered, yielding wildly different results. The same cannot be said of traditional art.

Looking forward I am going to make a very bold statement.

All of the great artists of the future will be utilizing modern technology to create their masterpieces. A new form has been born, and the old forms simply cannot compete.

I love this talk by Steve Jobs at the 2005 Stanford commencement ceremony.

Hola readers – I hope you are doing well. I’m very happy to announce on this blog my new company, Uplifted. We’ve been in business now for 3 months, and it’s been a great ride.  We’ve been really busy, but I am thinking that I may even be able to take a day off sometime soon!!

So – if you need any web design, marketing, or just to talk let me know!

Also, I have been posting regularly to our Facebook fan page.  The posts are almost all focused on globalization and technology – which I really think are combining to make the world a better place.

Become a fan on Facebook!

Here’s a quick peek at a video I posted yesterday.  Pretty inspiring.

Sometimes I wonder if people think I am crazy. I mean come on, get a real job, have kids, move to the suburbs. Quit it with your ‘web development business’ and dating young Argenhots. I have heard on multiple occasions from ex-girlfriends that I have ‘commitment issues’…

Au contraire amigos! Stability is one of the most important virtues to aspire to.

Digest on these nuggets of wisdom:

• From a business perspective the best clients are ones that come back for more over and over.  Referrals are also nice to have from clients that like your work.
• From a love perspective the ideal to envy is the young couple that grows happily old together.  Obviously they are frisky the whole time and constantly naked for 70 years.  Referrals here – not so nice, unless you are into swinging.
• From a health perspective you stay healthy by being committed to a healthy lifestyle. I guess you could be committed to Big Macs too and be committed to being unhealthy…

I guess what I’m trying to say is that stick-to-itive-ness is really freaking important.  People want to know that you will be around and that you will get the job done.  Its great to have good ideas and all – but it is like 100,000,000 times better to get those ideas executed.