Just a warning to any developers considering doing business with the YK Pao School in Shanghai -- Don't. They've cheated me out of several thousand dollars for web development on their shitty Joomla site. www.ykpaoschool.cn
Last time I logged in their login information was: user: www pass: YKPao!@#
Feel free to hack at will. Those guys are non-paying snakes.
Since iCouch is now based in New York, we thought it appropriate that we start paying more attention to the New York Yankees.
I grew up a Houston Astros fan, a team I still love, but I'm fast becoming a Yankees fan. I will never, under any circumstances, become a Mets fan because of their National League Playoffs victory over the Houston Astros. The '86 Astros were perhaps one of the best teams ever to play in Houston and the Met's victory was heartbreaking. So, f-- the Mets.
Anyway, first inning, opening day of the New York Yankees at the Tampa Bay Rays, the Yankees score nothing in the top of the first.
..and then Carlos Pena hits a grand slam against Yankee starting pitcher CC Sabathia.
A hell of a start to baseball season: an opening day, first inning grand slam.
As the final days of the TechStars-affiliated Blueprint Health Accelerator approach, I've been nearly non-stop in preparing for the iCouch presentation for Demo Day on March 29.
There are many ways to prepare for an investor demo day, and, until we close our funding round, I can speak for how effective our approach has been, but here are some tips that we've developed that might be helpful to others preparing for the pitch of their company's life.
1. Find a story.
I can emphasize this point enough. It's absolutely the most important thing when it comes to preparing a pitch, a deck or a presentation. Humans are story addicts. In fact, there's plenty of research to suggest that our thirst for stories have evolutionary roots. When sitting around the campfire, the people who pay attention to the stories are the ones that learn how their ancestors survived a bear attack. The ones that didn't pay attention got eaten and didn't reproduce.
Stories are in our blood.
With iCouch, the story is pretty simple. People need help, so we crafted our pitch around a person, a single person that experiences the "problem" of not being able to find great mental health care on her schedule. From this person, we crafted our pitch around the idea that "your solution isn't my problem" (hat tip to Dave McClure of 500 Startups.)
Just because we built a cool new widget, doesn't mean that widget means anything to you. By crafting a relatable story, we're making our solution relevant to your problem, or at least a problem to which you can relate.
2. Make the business data relevant to the problem.
This doesn't sound very helpful at first glance, but digging deeper it should be obvious. Just because you have a market size of X million users, doesn't mean that it matters. Similarly to the way many people don't care about 1000 people dying in an earthquake, yet an entire country seems to stop about a story of a lost puppy. Market size is important to the business side of your company, but it often doesn't get a very emotional reaction unless placed in context of your story. And yes, emotion is very important for demo day presentation. Demo Day is theater. Demo Day is theater. It doesn't have anything to do with data -- that comes later in meetings with investors. The goal of a demo day presentation is to light a fire under investors and make them beg for meetings.
We don't necessarily have the magic formula, but the way we are using data in our presentation is to frame it in context of the characters in our story. For iCouch, we focus on a single client and a single therapist. We start narrowly and then expand out to a more global view in the context of our characters. Don't start with market size, start with a market of one. After all, if one person needs/loves/can't live without your product, then you're on to something.
That being said, it's important to make your character someone that can be an archetype of your users. Investors are very smart -- they see through bullshit numbers like "$11 billion dollar market" in about .25 seconds. But, if you make your character into someone they might know, then they do the math themselves and know you're on to something. In some specialized industries where the supply and demand aren't obvious, a little market-size context is helpful. For example, if you're selling a product for doctors -- everyone knows that there are hundreds of thousands of doctors. But, if you're selling a product to help chefs keep salmon fresh longer, you might want to mention just how big of a problem salmon freshness might be. Talking about the potential market size for a general interest social network (like Facebook) is worthless -- we know how many people there are. But, if you're talking about the potential market for a fixed-gear bicycle social network, you might want to provide a little more information.
3. Write the story and think visually.
What the hell does that mean? What it means is that a Demo Day pitch is not a blog. It's not a brochure. It's theater. Think of how the words you say will sound over a microphone in a large room full of people. Think of single images that capture your point. I prepared my pitch at the same time as I prepared my visuals. The best movies use visuals as accents or counterpoints to dialog -- the best presentations do the same.
4. Watch TED presentations.
5. Watch Steve Jobs at the 2007 Macworld Keynote where he introduced the iPhone.
6. Read Presentation Zen.
7. Don't make people read slides.
Your slides should accent or counterpoint your words. Don't put more than 6 words on a slide. Ever.
8. Practice aloud. Don't practice in your head.
Stand up. See how the words feel when you deliver them. See how they interact with your slides.
9. Don't follow everyone's advice.
This one is important. Most people suck at presentations even though they might be billionaire business geniuses. Listen to everyone, but be very strict on the advice you actually follow. There's a big fucking difference between an investor pitch deck and a Demo Day presentation. Demo Day is theater. Remember that. Your job is to excite people into requesting a meeting. It's effectively a commercial for your team and your product (in that order.
10. Big fonts. Really big fonts.
Guy Kawasaki advises never to use a font below 30 points. I personally think that's bullshit. There is no font on any of our presentation slides below 56 point. We even have a few place where we use a 1000 point font. Think big. Design big. Besides the room is crowded and the projector resolutions can be questionable. Make it simple for the blind man in the back row to see exactly what you've put on your slide.
Good luck!
If anyone is interested in how to start writing their presentation, this is how we started..
"Good afternoon, I'm Brian Dear, CEO of iCouch..."
Yet another example of big city governments out of control.
The Washington, DC Taxi Commission, under the leadership of King Commissioner Ron Lonton ticketed and impounded the car of Riadh, a driver for Uber. Lonton or the DCTC gave no reason for the impounding and it left the driver without his car for three days -- for drivers that's a serious financial hit.
Uber is donating $1 from every DC trip to Riadh to help defray some of the hardship until he gets his car back. That's a great company.
For those not familiar with Uber, it pretty much the coolest thing to happen to taxis and limos since air conditioning. Uber is a service that lets users summon (and pay) for a Towncar with a well-designed and simple mobile application. It's disrupting the way we travel in the big city (in a good way.)
The old days: hail a taxi. Hope one stops. Forgettaboutit if it's raining. Hope they don't get pissy about using your credit card. Wait for the damned receipt to print. Sign it. Of course the driver doesn't have a pen, or look for cash buried in the pockets of your skinny jeans. Hope the driver has change for a 20. Peel yourself from the sticky vinyl seats.
or
Call a car service and talk to someone who asks you five times for your phone number, cross streets and blood type. Wait for the car. Hopefully the driver calls you when he's nearby. Ride in expensive style. Find your credit card, fumble with cash. Pay the driver. Try not to feel guilty about a smaller tip (he was late and the car smelled like feet.)
The Uber way: Open app. Click "Pickup", go outside when the app tells you the car is nearby (the app uses your GPS to get your location.) Get in car. Ride in comfortable and affordable style. Get out at your destination. Do a happy dance.
Uber makes it easy -- automatic (and accurate billing and tip.) No waiting around hoping a taxi stops. No complaints for taking a short trip.
I first used Uber last Monday to get my 27" iMac from my new apartment on Prince Street, NYC to the iCouch offices at 483 Broadway. Less than a half mile of total distance, but I didn't want to walk carrying the bulky computer, lest I drop it! I also wanted to be sure that some impatient taxi driver wouldn't cause me problems when loading the computer into the trunk. I also didn't have any cash. My Uber driver (Felicia) showed up and made me feel welcome and relaxed. She didn't complain about the short trip, in fact, she made me feel great about using Uber as a moving service.
Ron Linton and the other assholes bureaucrats in city governments seem to be on a serious power trip.
Here in New York, "Hizzoner" Mayor Bloomberg is trying to enact another city ordinance limiting alcohol sales. They've even made it illegal to smoke in Times Square. You can barely walk on a sidewalk without bumping into overzealous city governments attemps to save us from ourselves (and make a pile of money to pay for cities overdosing on spending.)
Attention city governments: chill out.
Other than that -- leave us alone. I don't need the city to tell me to recycle. I don't need the city to tell me how much exercise I need. New York, for example can't even stop rat infestations in the subway stations. Perhaps they should solve the rat problem before bothering people about their personal health. Perhaps DC ought to worry about their volent crime rates before picking on the fantastic independent contractors driving for Uber.
The January 2012 issue of Macworld features a few letters from folks still dismayed about Lion, the latest operating system for Mac.
From one reader:
"Versions is rather half-baked: Now, if you want to create a copy of a file, you choose Duplicate, not Save As, and the Duplicate feature is rather slow and overly animated."
It's too bad that users with enough time on their hands to send a letter to a magazine can't use that same time to learn something about the OS with which they claim to have problems.
Here's a solution from the fantastic book Mac Kung Fu from the Pragmatic Bookshelf.
Turn off pop-up windows and dialogs:
In Terminal, type: defaults write -g NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool no
Slide out dialog boxes instantly:
In Terminal, type: defaults write -g NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.01
Yes, the solutions might seem "technical," but to the type of user that hates animations and/or clings to the olden times, using Terminal to tweak the OS should harken back to the good old days of command line interfaces.
The simple fact about Mac OS in general and Lion specifically, is that it's exceptionally powerful and can be customized to work exactly how you prefer. It just takes a little tinkering under the hood.
Another reader:
"I'm very disappointed with the font support in Lion. iCal has an unreadable font and no way to change it."
Unreadable? If you're blind, then I can't argue with a readability claim (although Lion fully supports accessibility devices,) however for the non-blind among us, the iCal font isn't "unreadable."
One of the biggest complaints about Lion was the introduction of natural scrolling (as opposed to the old-skool standard of reverse scrolling.) The new scrolling of Lion is far more natural, especially if you're used to using iOS devices. The concept behind the new scrolling is that you're manipulating the actual content as opposed to manipulating the viewing window of the content. This is a subtle distinction, however it makes sense. If I want to move a piece of paper to the back of my physical desk, I don't slide it towards me -- I slide it to where I want it to go. Lion simply completed the desktop metaphor by making your content move as it would in the real world. Push it up and it moves up. The natural scrolling introduced by Lion is just good design.
Read The Design of Everyday Things for a more academic explaination into the concept of intuitive behavior and how good design should be an extension of human nature and not some arbitrary creation.
With any new technology, there'll be people wishing for faster horses rather than automobiles..
#This #is #not #how #you #use #hash #tags
— John West(@JohnWestt) December 12, 2011
There's a right way and a wrong way to do things.
From Twitter's "What are Hashtags?"
Definition: The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.
Example: In the Tweet below, @twitter added the hashtag before the phrase "thankyousteve". The word is now a link to search results for all Tweets containing "#thankyousteve" in the message.
This is a fail:
Awesome crazy #guitarist of a #chinese #rock #band at #modernskyfestival #pop #concert #festival #beijing #china instagr.am/p/YrDAs/
— Georg Müller (@Georg_G_Mueller) December 12, 2011
This is ok:
Submit your #psychology questions to the #icouch mailbag! blog.icouch.me/?tag=mailbag
— iCouch.me (@iCouchMe) December 12, 2011
Thanks for keeping @Twitter better than @Facebook.
Rails is awesome. I know. I'm about 5 years late to the party, but I got here as soon as I could. My path to learning how to program started about a year ago when I started iCouch and began hiring a development consultantcy to help us create iCouch.me. With some judicious googling and the help of 37signals's Sortfolio, I found a cool Jacksonville, Florida company called Hashrocket.
I don't think I would be learning Rails if it weren't for guys named Adam Lowe and Tim Pope. Our team at Hashrocket had many other incredible guys, but it was Adam and Tim with a little dash of Robert Pitts that really influenced me and even encouraged me to become a Rubyist. For those unfamiliar with "The Hashrocket Way," it's essentially a way of working that involves the client in daily "standups" where the client and the developers have a short chat before starting the day's work. The programming community calls it "Agile" and there's a subset of Agile called "Extreme Programming" that's typical of the way Hashrocket works. Whatever you what to call it, the terminology isn't important. What is important is that the client is a critical part of the development process.
It was through this collaborative process that I was inspired to start learning how to build web applications.
My process started obviously while working with Hashrocket, but my real learning began when I discovered the Pragmatic Bookshelf, heartily recommended by Adam Lowe. From Pragmatic, I first bought Learn to Program and then Beginning Mac Programming. The Mac programming book focused on Objective C (more on that later,) and the Learn to Program book was a great intro book using pure Ruby. From there, I progressed to Agile Web Development with Rails, although admittedly I didn't have the patience to get through that book. While it's an excellent book, I was more interested in learning right now (!) and sought out more complex resources, especially tutorials using more Hashrockety stuff such as Test Driven Development and Behavioral Driven Development.
As Hashrocket was founded by Obie Fernandez, a legend in the Rails community, I tried to read his great book The Rails 3 Way. Unfortunately, I was still a little too virginal to jump right into the 3 way, so I settled on The Rails Tutorial screencast/book from Michael Hartl (which was recommended in Obie's book's introduction for beginners. This screencast series is fantastic. It teaches Test Driven Development right from the start with Rspec, so I was excited -- finally, I was learning real development.
I have to say that I've come farther in just a few weeks with Hartl's tutorial than I had in months of farting around with my hodgepodge of resources. I have now returned to Pragmatic for a few more advanced topics such as Cucumber and Rpec and more advanced Rails topics.
I just recently subscribed to Code School which has some great Rails resources, but also topics such as JQuery, which is vital to developing great applications that not only work well, but have great user experiences. PeepCode's JQuery screencast has also been very helpful.
Finally, and I can't recommend this enough, find a mentor. Find someone that you can politely bother on Skype or over email to ask those questions that aren't always covered in the books. For me, I've been lucky enough to call Obie Fernandez and Trace Wax friends. They tolerate me more than they probably should, but that just goes to show how the Rails world is full of great people. The current Hashrocketeers are also willing to help. Rogelio Samour is a phenomenal resource, especially in the area of setting up a proper development environment.
The Rails community can be an opinionated bunch (just ask Tim Pope about Vim vs. Textmate,) so I'm of course being heavily influenced by the Obie/Hashrocket side of the debate -- but that's fine by me. I love a good argument. I love getting into heated Hacker News rumbles about how awesome Haml is compared to ERB and how Sass makes CSS look like Java. It's fun! It beats the hell out of the humourless Java crowd.
Oh, I almost forget about the Objective C thing I mentioned earlier -- I ended up building an iPhone app for iCouch called iCouch CBT. So in the middle of my Rails education, I took a few months detour to learn enough Objective C and iOS programming so we could build our iPhone app. The Beginning Mac Programming book was a good intro to Objective C, but it'll take another blog posting to explain how I went from zero to top rated iPhone app in barely 3 months.
I'm focused heavily on Rails these days, but I'll be swimming back in forth between the iOS and Rails islands, trying my best to avoid drowning. Luckily, I have some great friends tossing me life preservers from time to time!
It always brings a chuckle when I hear about US environmentalist complaining about "carbon" and talking about such nonsense as "carbon footprints." CO2 is not a pollutant. Sorry, but it's true. Plants breathe it. You can't see it. You don't die from exposure to it. It doesn't give you bronchitis or lung cancer. It hasn't been connected with any health problems.
Carbon hysteria is more closely aligned with the Occupy crowd. Controlling carbon output is just a means of controlling production which is a means of redistribution. It's a communist Trojan Horse. Sorry, but those are facts. Find 1 person that died from chronic CO2 exposure and I'll eat your hat. Find 1 tree in the rainforest that died because of CO2 and I'll eat my own hat.
However, CO2 aside, there are some real, serious threats to the environment. I am highly opposed to CO2 regulation, but I can wholeheartedly endorse pollution controls. Real pollution, like Sulfur Dioxide, Benzene and other stuff you wouldn't expose a rapist too, let alone the entire population.
I live in Shanghai and I'm growing to hate it. I love the excitment of Shanghai, the lights, the free-wheeling traffic and the low cost for certain things. I also like my apartment (except for those bastards next door who enjoy using jackhammers to renovate at 8am on Sunday mornings.) However, this morning, I went on the terrace to enjoy the cool morning and I was reminded why it's getting to be time to leave this country.
The air is horrid. I wake up each morning with congestion and almost pain from being outside too often. The air is thick, like a blanket of putrid coal fire. The sky is occassionallyvisible.. but only on certain holidays or during events like the World Expo when the authorities actually enforce the burn bands put in place to prevent farmers from burning their fields. Yes, farmers still burn their fields in China. They have trains that exceed 300 km/hr but their farmers are stuck not in the Qing Dynasty -- even further back than that, perhaps the Tang Dynasty.
Besides the air, there's the issue of the water. Don't eat fish caught locally in China. Chances are you'll be eating mercury and benzene with a cocktail of other exciting "vitamins." The waters have an irridescent sheen. It's beautiful only if you're an abstract painter looking for inpiration.
I won't even get started on the Internet or business issues here. That's a rant for another day.
It has become a Sunday morning tradition. I slowly wake up to the obnoxious sounds of construction noise in the adjacent apartment and reach for my iPhone. The new Macalope is ready!
This week's installment has me scratching my head over Consumer Reports and their nonsensical methodology used for comparing products such as the iPhone. The iPhone 4 failed to get their highest rating because of the near non-existence of a media-fueled antenna problem. I've had an iPhone 4 since January 2011 and I've had no problems. My wife has one as well and she's had no problems. In fact, they are, without a doubt the best consumer electronic devices we've ever owned. We can't live without them. The user experience is incredible. In fact, I love my phone so much that I even learned Objective C to build apps for the phone. I don't think any other device has inspired me to learn a programming language! My Samsung Instinct certainly never made me want to rush out and learn to write code!
And now, with the Consumer Reports review of the iPhone 4S, I maintain my beffudlement. They rank phones like the LD Thrill and Motorola Driod Bionic as higher simply because they fill up more rows on the feature-list spreadsheet. (Consumer Reports is probably still using Excel to make their charts -- we couldn't expect them to actually have tried Numbers which is far, far better.) What's clear to me is that Consumer Reports has no clue about the most important aspect of using a product -- the User Experience. The User Experience is why my wife switched to a MacBook Air over her old Dell laptop. The User Experience is why the iPad has totally destroyed the competition in tablets and netbooks. It's the User Experience stupid! Of course when actually reading Consumer Reports, it's clear that they don't care about User Experience at all. It would seem that they're using the very best desktop publishing software Microsoft had to offer -- from 1996. The magazine is useless other than for serving as fodder for blogs like mine. It seems like their tech "experts" are little more than IT engineers who took early retirement because their Windows NT skills were no longer needed. Certainly no respectable technologist would rank the Motorola Droid over the iPhone 4s in user experience.
Here's a news flash -- consumers don't care about feature lists. They only care if the features work well. It's the User Experience stupid. I ought to get a t-shirt made. Or run for elected office.
git push..
Hello everyone. Welcome. I'm Brian Dear.
