Facebook should build a phone: Henry Blodget will be proven wrong just like iPhone naysayers before him

Is Facebook capable of building a phone? Almost certainly. Should they? Yes. That's why Henry Blodget is so wrong about how Facebook shouldn't build a phone. It reminds me of a 2007 article by Matthew Lynn for Bloomberg, declaring that the Apple iPhone would fail as a late, defensive move

I am one of the biggest fans of Apple, and the iPhone and iPad are by far the best computing experiences I've ever had. But I'm not particularly happy about the current state of computing. Great user experience comes at a cost, but the cost these days is higher than I care for. The trains run great in a totalitarian state, but is that worth the loss of developer freedom?

Blodget says that building hardware is hard -- but if we remember correctly, Apple was a disaster of a place just 12 years ago, floundering at hardware, software, and most everything else. In 2000, the idea that an American technology firm would be the most dominant electronics brand in the world in 2012 was absurd. Apple built its abilities from a place of great weakness -- really near death.

Facebook's biggest asset is its ability to hire and attract the best talent in the world. This was also what Apple has executed on perfectly since its return to prominence. At both places, there is a strong hacker culture and a true belief that what they're doing is the most important, society-changing work in the world. 

The "ability to build hardware" is not some esoteric magic. It is a knowhow embedded in the brains of smart engineers -- engineers who have skills so valuable that they are mobile and they will seek places where they can have maximum impact. Great products are built by talented human beings who will go where they know they can change the world. Outside of startups and a few great companies like Apple or Facebook, there are few places where "change the world" is really something you can wake up to. 

The stakes for tomorrow's computing paradigm is incredibly high. I, for one, hope Facebook does have a phone in the works, and a damn good one too. They've got a visionary founder who is young and in charge and can ship great technology. They're one of the only companies who have the capital, talent, and capability to do it. 

How a train ride helped Mixpanel get into YC

I'm so proud of Suhail, Tim, and the team at Mixpanel -- they just announced their $10 million Series A funding with #1 VC firm Andreessen Horowitz

Back in 2009, I had just moved back to San Francisco and we had just raised our angel round for Posterous. We worked out of our bedrooms in SOMA in San Francisco. A friend of mine, Dan Haubert of Ticketstumbler (R.I.P. Dan) had introduced me to a pair of young hackers out of Arizona State, Suhail Doshi and Tim Trefen. 

They were in town for their YC interview. We met up at the Creamery across from the SF Caltrain for coffee, and I tried to impart whatever wisdom we had about how to get through the process. Good ole' Creamery...

What was supposed to be just an hour meeting turned into a couple of hours, as we talked at length about their vision for analytics done right. Suhail had worked with Max Levchin and the Slide team, and that's where he realized how data-driven decisions could make or break a product. 

I ended up having to jet out of there, since I was headed down to Mountain View by Caltrain. We decided to head over together, since that would give us more time to go over the pitch. They were headed to Mountain View for their interview at YC Headquarters.

On the train, I had the idea of implementing Mixpanel analytics for tracking what people did on the homepage. It was as simple as it is today -- drop one line of javascript on the page. I'd like to say it took just a minute, but it actually took about ten. Embarrasingly, I forgot a semicolon someplace in the Javascript function call! 

When Suhail and Tim walked into the YC offices for their interview with the partners, they were able to say Mixpanel was so easy to implement it happened on the trainride down from San Francisco -- and that you could see realtime data from the Posterous homepage right that moment, just minutes after implementing it. 

Proud to be one of the early datapoints in the now 7 billion Mixpanel has tracked. And many more to come. 

The adventure game lives!

Remember the good old pixelated days of yore? Action packed, story and puzzle-driven interactive fiction of the highest order? That's what Gabriel Knight was. I grew up playing these games. King's Quest. Police Quest. Space Quest. Day of the Tentacle. Indiana Jones. Sam and Max Hit the Road. 

Yet somewhere along the way, the great, cerebral, deep games that told a real story vanished. There are a few more recent examples -- the heart of this lineage lives on in new titles like LA Noire, Heavy Rain, Red Dead Redemption, and yes, even Grand Theft Auto 4. I look forward eagerly to the upcoming Max Payne. But once every few years is not enough. 

Well, maybe it is time for the return of the adventure game. And the creator of Gabriel Knight, Jane Jensen, is back on Kickstarter having just met her goal of $300K raised for her next great project, Moebius.

Contribute to Jane Jensen's Kickstarter. I just did. Let's bring back the adventure game!

Read more at The Verge

PS, I just read about this new Telltale Games adventure game called The Walking Dead. I will be checking it out shortly. 

To soften our view of others

Jesus urged his followers to learn to look at other adults as they might at children. Few things can more quickly transform our sense of a person's character than picturing him or her as a child; from this perspective, we are better able to express the sympathy and generosity that we all but naturally display towards the young, whom we tend to describe as naughty rather than bad, cheeky rather than arrogant. This is the same sort of softening we may feel towards anyone whom we see sleeping: with eyes closed and features relaxed and defenceless, a sleeper invites a gentle regard that in itself is almost love—so much so, in fact, that it can be unsettling to gaze at length at a stranger asleep beside us on a train or plane. That unmasked face seems to prompt us towards an intimacy that calls into question the foundations of civilised indifference on which ordinary communal relations rest. But there is no such thing as a stranger, a Christian would say; there is only the impression of strangeness, born out of a failure to acknowledge that others share both our needs and our weaknesses.

--ALAIN DE BOTTON, in his book STATUS ANXIETY

How does a startup out-recruit Google? Palantir cofounder Stephen Cohen explains.

In a conversation at Stanford with Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, my friend Stephen Cohen (cofounder of Palantir Technologies) says:

We tend to massively underestimate the compounding returns of intelligence. As humans, we need to solve big problems. If you graduate Stanford at 22 and Google recruits you, you’ll work a 9-to-5. It’s probably more like an 11-to-3 in terms of hard work. They’ll pay well. It’s relaxing. But what they are actually doing is paying you to accept a much lower intellectual growth rate. When you recognize that intelligence is compounding, the cost of that missing long-term compounding is enormous. They’re not giving you the best opportunity of your life. Then a scary thing can happen: You might realize one day that you’ve lost your competitive edge. You won’t be the best anymore. You won’t be able to fall in love with new stuff. Things are cushy where you are. You get complacent and stall. So, run your prospective engineering hires through that narrative. Then show them the alternative: working at your startup.

My friend and fellow Y Combinator partner Aaron Iba gives incredible lectures when we visit top CS schools on behalf of YC. He says the sense you get from college recruiters is that you get to write new code. Most great hackers love to do this. But that's not what you get from a software engineering position at the tech giants. You get to maintain old code. The job should really be called software technician. 

So that's why starting a startup or working at a startup is so much more rewarding. You get to keep your edge. 

Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea

At CMU yesterday, I heard a story about how Yahoo Trip Planner has pretty much zero adoption. It has never taken off, though it remains online even today. Yahoo keeps it around because it's fantastic for recruiting. People love to work on this idea! Yahoo recruiters lure talented engineers, designers and PMs to work on this project, then gradually shift them off to real value-creating projects once they're hired. 

Travel planning software (the kind that you would use with friends and family to plan vacations) is one of the most common ideas pitched. It has been attempted, and attempted, and attempted again. 

It doesn't surprise me that people go after this, though. The idea actually points in the right direction: founders pursuing this idea are looking to solve problems or pain points in their life. Brilliant. And practically everyone has the problem of not spending enough quality time with friends and family. Travel is the best and most meaningful way to do that. Surely this is something that solves a big problem that everyone wants. 

Yet so far, this particular idea doesn't lead to massive success and incredible amounts of value creation. My best guess is that a truly great consumer service needs to be something that is can be used every day. My friend Suhail Doshi, CEO of Mixpanel (he'd know a thing or two about analytics), recently told me that 20% daily retention is probably the baseline at which a service has legs. 

This points to the deeper problem that underlies every product or service: obscurity. I only have a finite number of slots in my brain. If I don't remember it, I won't use it. And I only remember things that I use often. Just like I order Coca Cola whenever I get a cheeseburger... the consumer web/mobile services I use need to be things I use all the time.  

Which leads us back to trip planning. How often do people really plan trips? For the typical working adult, probably once or twice a year if you're lucky. In fact, Americans are notorious for shirking vacation, clocking the lowest rates of vacation on the planet. Twice a year just doesn't cut it.

I used to think nobody needs this. That's probably not true. Lots of people want this. They just won't ever be able to remember it. 

Screams of Silica, the college essay that got me into Stanford in 1999

I was spelunking in archive.org and found my old homepage from back in the day. I stumbled across my college admissions essay to Stanford. I wrote it in the winter of 1998. My how time flies.

Screams of Silica

Grains of sand have feelings too. As environmentalists bicker over trees, who will be there for the billions upon billions of grains of sand out there? Soon, entire deserts of sand will be harvested for silicon! These poor creatures will be decimated and irrevocably altered into ungodly silicon wafers. It is time to rise up and fight for our silicon dioxide crystal brothers and sisters.

We've all heard the analogy... If cars evolved like computers, they would cruise comfortably at 10,000 mph, get a million miles to the gallon, and if it broke, you could go to the store and pick up a new one for a dime. Moore's Law of exponential growth has been a godsend to Silicon Valley. With computer technology doubling in speed and complexity every eighteen months, people spend billions annually to replace last year's models. Countless multitudes of crystals of silica are being sacrificed for a short use of but a few years. Moore's Law has resulted in the systematic murder of these unassuming, innocent, naturally occurring crystals.

At the same time, Moore's Law has kept the computer the domain of a privileged few. Prices continue to be beyond the range of affordability for many. Even today, fewer than 40% of Americans own computers. Technological advancement will eventually hit a wall. Moore's Law is not an absolute. Computers have always been getting faster and cheaper. Someday, with that quest for speed out of the picture, cheap will be the name of the game. Imagine the horrors as the other 60% rushes down to the store to buy the next 100 gigahertz Intel Octium VII Pro for $9.95 at the local Fry's Electronics. The horrors of such an age would make the systematic slaughter of silica of today look like children building sandcastles.

The prospect of computers everywhere not only threatens the fate of sand particles everywhere, but also the place of ignorance in society. With information exchange and dissemination at everyone's fingertips, where would ignorance and tyranny go? Evil dictators around the world would be displaced as computer-engendered thought and communication tears millions of minds from abject poverty and subjugation and transforms them into organized, united and educated masses. The world would be at our fingertips. The great WWII-era scientist Dr. Vannevar Bush once postulated a device called the Memex, which would augment the mind with hypertext memories. The rise of ubiquitous network computers could be just the augmentation of humanity that the doctor ordered.

Certainly, the ubiquity of the computer might change society at its core. Sure, it might result in the rise of new media, and the empowerment of the individual on a grand scale. Indeed, it might even result in world peace and harmony among all men. But humanity must not be selfish. We share this planet with the trees, and more importantly, the earth. Can we afford to continue to victimize these helpless crystals of silica? May their silent screams haunt our motherboards as we type away with reckless carpal tunnel abandon.

Now computers are faster and cheaper than ever. Far more than 40% of Americans own computers today. Indeed, 50% of Americans own smartphones, which are a more omnipresent, portable, and totally networked version of the personal computer from 1998. By all means an upgrade.

So far, no 100 ghz Intel Octiums. Empowerment of the individual on a grand scale though? Check.

Steve Jobs and Farhad Manjoo are wrong: Dropbox can do what Apple, Microsoft and Google can never do.

Farhad Manjoo writes in Pando Daily about how Dropbox is just a feature. Unfortunately the examples he talks about seem to support the exact opposite.

Someday, someone will figure out how to make this sort of thing work well, but I suspect it will most likely be one of the companies that makes a major operating system: Either Apple, Microsoft, or Google. Each of these firms has a file-storage and/or syncing solution that it’s pushing, and I expect that those efforts—iCloud, Skydrive, Google’s Chrome syncing and perhaps the mythical Gdrive—will gradually incorporate more and more of the features I’m looking for.

This assertion is about as wrong as could be. Earlier in the piece Farhad talks about how things just plain worked as Dropbox synced things from his Windows desktop to his Macbook Air. What are the odds of Apple getting their sync client right for PC's? Just about zero, considering what they've done in the past with MobileMe sync.

Same goes for Microsoft writing sync software for the Apple platform. Arguably Google is in the best shape to provide a seamless multiplatform experience... well, except for iOS! The odds of a viable multi-platform option emerging from one of these big three seem slim to me.

The truth is none of these behemoths will execute perfectly on this scenario in the way Dropbox (with no ulterior platform motive) can.

Dropbox is probably working to build many of these features as well. But as third-party app, it’s just not in a very good technical position to do so. In order to sync programs and window states, Dropbox would need access to some of the deeper parts of my various gadgets’ OSes. This is easy for some operating systems and impossible with others—including iOS and probably Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Apple could easily build a way to sync the current browser tabs between my Mac and my iPhone, so that I can switch from reading Pando on my couch to reading it on the train. Dropbox will need to go through incredible hacks to achieve the same functionality, and it probably won’t manage to do so even then.

Sadly Farhad is just wrong on this too. Getting native bare-metal access is easy to get on every platform that matters except iOS. On iOS, Dropbox *already* has a huge lead on all of the other file syncing platforms by virtue of wide support by the developer community. Apple will undoubtedly get some share of iOS developer love, but it is yet to be seen whether Apple will actually unseat Dropbox.

Truthfully, it is foolish to count large platform players out. But my money is on Dropbox. Until Apple wins every last device over (not even a goal of theirs), Microsoft steals the show for mobile and regains share on desktop (highly unlikely), or Google wrests mobile supremacy from the hands of iOS (not going to happen) -- the ongoing platform cold war will assure it's Dropbox that's going to be how we keep our data.

When a few hundred lines of javascript could equal $100 MM

If you click around the radio buttons above, the form resets. Orbitz does an AJAX call to reset the form with new HTML. I can select two cities, select my dates... and I just decide to click "Flight + Hotel", Orbitz blows away my form submissions (data loss!)  and replaces it with a blank form! Not only is this rude to the user, it's bad for business. 

This simple UX gaffe could be worth double digit percentage decrease in revenue for Orbitz over the course of a year. For a company that made over $700 MM, that's could easily be over 9 figures. 

This could be solved with an incredibly simple and tiny amount of javascript to remember selected airports and leave/return dates. It could be fixed in less than an hour by a halfways decent hacker.

It's things like this that make me thankful for Hipmunk.

Compliance: A reminder that we must rage against the machine, lest we be chewed up in it

Just caught the last Sundance Film Festival showing of a very powerful, very disturbing film called Compliance. Directed by Craig Zobel, it documents the strip search prank scam that hit over 70 fast food restaurants over 10 years and 30 states. This is why it's so damn disturbing. It was real. 

The Hollywood Reporter summarizes:

At a local franchise of the ChickWich chain located in a snowy Ohio town, middle-aged store manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) briefs her mostly young and disinterested staff on the key points of her stressful day: an employee oversight has spoiled the bacon so supplies are low and a secret shopper from headquarters could be dropping by at any time. Late as usual, cute, 19-year-old blonde Becky (Dreama Walker) gives Sandra some unwelcome attitude and proceeds to slack off when she’s not serving customers at the counter.

Sandra gets a phone call mid-shift from a male caller claiming to be police officer Daniels (Pat Healy), who explains that the cops have received a complaint that Becky stole some money from a customer’s purse earlier in the day. He insists that Sandra will need to question Becky about the theft, since he says he’s occupied with a search of Becky’s home as part of a larger investigation.

Hesitant at first, Sandra agrees to assist the officer and brings Becky into the back office, where the girl denies any involvement with the theft. With Daniels still on the phone directing the investigation, Sandra becomes his proxy, relaying his questions to Becky or handing the phone to her so he can question Becky directly. Daniels’ voice is calm, insistent and commanding, with an attitude that brooks no resistance.

Tensions escalate after Sandra’s search of Becky’s purse and pockets doesn’t turn up the missing money and Daniels directs her to strip-search her employee, saying the only alternative is for the cops to jail Becky while the investigation continues. After eliciting Becky’s compliance, Sandra agrees, calling in her assistant manager to be present while Becky strips and they search her clothes, with no result. In a chilling scene of dread and humiliation, Daniels demands that Becky strip completely naked to be certain there’s nothing hidden in her underclothes.

Daniels insists that Becky must remain naked, although a coworker gives her an apron to put on while he directs Sandra to put Becky’s clothes in her car and leave it unlocked so the police can collect the evidence. Sandra then insists on going back to work in the busy restaurant and Daniels directs her to have a male employee watch Becky “for security purposes.” Daniels then follows with a series of increasingly invasive search techniques and questions about Becky’s body, accompanied by reluctant cooperation on the part of several men that Sandra recruits for assistance, with appalling results.

Scene-by-scene, the film details the insidious rhetorical tricks the prank caller uses to get compliance from weak and powerless fast food restaurant workers. The workers aren't evil. They might be stupid. But it's clear that they think they're doing the right thing at each moment. 

The reaction at Sundance has been heavily polarized. Many walked out of early screenings, with the first showing even sparking fiery and angry shouts from the crowd at the Q&A session afterwards. The showing I went to was no different. Some in the audience were visibly agitated.  

It's no mistake that those most susceptible to this prank were fast food workers, whose entire industry is predicated on systematically cultivating dependable, compliant, unquestioning workers who can perform menial tasks with little deviation. The most shocking and/or intriguing part of the film was how those who had the power to stop it didn't. It was like watching a frog being slowly boiled alive. You could not have a more direct portrayal of the banality of evil -- that phrase coined by Hannah Arendt used to describe the Holocaust -- that such evil happens not at the hands of fanatics or sociopaths but people merely believing they are doing normal things. 

That evil can be perpetrated through the guise of authority is not surprising in and of itself. What is revolting and unacceptable to us is how it calls into question our very social contract. We are supposed to be kept safe, that the powers that be are benevolent and have our best interests at heart. But how can we trust that when there are situations in which we do not question authority at all? The whole system might be corrupt. 

Ultimately, the film serves as a powerful reminder of how much we have to continue to rage against the machine. We must challenge and question authority and the way things are. We must evaluate that which society has us do, no matter whether it asks or tells. To shirk this duty is to abdicate our basic responsibilities to ourselves and each other.