Last night Abby and I were having a nice little stroll to dinner when the subject of Facebook came up. I mentioned to her Mark Zuckerberg's reported comments via IM about Facebook users. "They trust me. Dumb f***s."
Don't know if the story is true or not. I do know that Facebook has a pretty aggressive attitude about privacy, one that does not sit well with many users including me. Abby was aghast about the Zuck's comment and asked "so what's the next Facebook?" It's a company that will do two thing well.
Performance was one of the main factors that led to the decline of MySpace. Privacy could lead to the decline of Facebook. The next great social network will perform at scale and treat users and their privacy preferences with respect.
One of the more rational voices during the recent chatter about startup events was Michael Blake. He asked the rather simple question "are there specific events that you think have outlived their
usefulness?" and threatened to throw me under the bus in retaliation if I mentioned StarupLounge. I am sure there are lots of buses I could throw myself under. Not going to do that.
When I was with my first startup I never attended events unless I was speaking or it was a business development activity. That, along with extensive travel left me not well networked. Not a good place to be. I got a bit connected and then involved with another startup. I committed to not letting my network wither. Toward that end, though the demands of rapidly growing a company made it difficult, I made it a professional development goal to go to about two events per month. If I were an earlier stage entrepreneur, although I might have the time to attend many more events, I would follow the same general rule. Target two per month, sometimes do more, sometimes do less. And this is how I might spend that time.
Attend the annual Startup Riot. Nice big event. Good networking. Opportunity to see lots of early stage startups present. Watching others present and listening to the crowd feedback is a great learning opportunity. If I were actually presenting at the Riot I would go to Startup Gauntlet to get open and honest feedback on my pitch.
I would attend StartupLounge. Again, nice big event. Great networking. Build relationships with some folks that might be able to help you down the line. Go to PitchCamp to prepare. It's a quarterly event. As long as you are making significant strides in moving your business forward go every other quarter.
Go to the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition finals. It will give you a view as to what people believe to be better seed stage companies. If you think you are ready or need a forcing event, apply. It will make you get some stuff done and you may get a mentor.
Startup Weekend. If you have never been in a startup before this is a nice little proxy for what it is like. We seem to do a pretty good job of launching companies like InstantLoop, Twitpay, and Skribit.
ATDC Showcase. This annual event is getting bigger and better every year.
Atlanta CEO Council. This is where the big dogs play. Meets six times a year. Need $1 million in capital raised or $5 million in revenue to get in the door.
Throw in ad-hoc and niche happenings in your area of interest and you are done. That would be my approach.
Now I have three questions for you entrepreneurs and startups. You are the customers of all this activity. I believe that event organizers would all welcome candid feedback. What specific events are helping to move you forward? What specific events do you think have outlived their
usefulness? Or put another way, if an entrepreneur came to you and asked for your advice about what events they should attend, what would you tell them?
The topic of the night was developing a marketing plan. That is a really challenging task to undertake for a new venture. Too many unkowns. Unkowns that are best solved via the customer development process. Regardless it is a business plan competition. They have to write something. Hopefully the audience walked away with some good thoughts on how to write a rational well thought out marketing plan that will help them in the competition and move their business along. More importantly I hope they got the message to get out of the classroom and go talk to customers.
It being Festivus it seems quite appropriate to air a grievance during an otherwise perfect holiday season.
My grievance is with American Express. I am deeply disappointed with them.
I had an AMEX charge card before I had a credit card. It was the first card I owned and used. Honestly was surprised that they give me one, but my first boss out of college told me to apply, and sure enough it was granted. I was a member. Have been a member since 84.
Over the years my AMEX use has grown. It is the primary card we use for household expenses. Used AMEX to buy laptops for new employees at MindSpring. Continued to use it during periods when I was traveling extensively on business, often racking up bills in excess of $10,000 per month. I think I was over $20,000 a few times. Even tried to buy my car with it though the dealer refused (I really like the Rewards Plus program and have taken many free trips to the Caribbean and mountains). I have 334,000 points in my Membership Rewards account. I easily have charged more than $1 million on my AMEX cards over the year, maybe more than $2 million. With the exception of current balances, which are not extraordinary, I have paid my bills.
I now have five AMEX accounts with nine cards outstanding. Many of these cards are used just to help with internal family accounting. Three of the accounts are used for businesses in which I am an officer. The Enfuse Group, Skribit, and another startup. Like my personal accounts these accounts are current.
So I have yet another startup, I need another AMEX account. I called up AMEX. Asked for another OPEN account. They would not even take the application. Said it would be rejected. I had too many accounts or something to that effect.
Excuse me. Here I am a long-term loyal customer with a FICO score above 800 and a life-time customer value that has to be off the charts and they are telling me they don't want any more of my business.
OPEN my derrière. AMEX you stink. I'll use that Citi card to finish up my Christmas shopping.
This morning I found a nice message in my mail box. A snippet of what it contained is below.
Yes 336 messages awaiting my response. Each with its own little check box spread across 27 distinct pages. And to quote LinkedIn's help pages "Deleting an item from your 'Inbox' is not an available function." Good grief. They have a function called archiving but it would require at least 363 clicks to clean out my Inbox.
I am declaring LinkedIn messaging amnesty.
Guilt is not a good method to increase use. LinkedIn needs a mass Inbox delete function or use of a river metaphor to handle messages.
Was to Mike the AT&T field technician who called to check on things after he upgraded the throughput on my service and left his cell phone number as a call back.
I called him around noon. Told him my saga in trying to get a wireless gateway. Asked him if he had one on the truck that he could drop off. Mike said sure. Asked me if I would leave the wrong ones on the porch. Told him I was a little hesitant to do so because I feared that I would be billed for them. I needed some evidence that they were returned. Calling customer service did not seem to be very effective.
Mike was cool. He said OK.
And about 4 hours later he showed up at my house, ring the doorbell, and handed the gateway to my wife.
Remember Nina. That lady I thought was a god send. She's a liar too.
My wireless modem never showed up on Friday.
Gotta give AT&T a little credit though. Mike showed up. I speed tested the AT&T service on Friday morning. Maxed out at 3Mbps. I signed up for 6Mbps. So I had to call technical support (my fifth AT&T call in this ordeal). It was about 7:30 am. They made me run an AT&T speed test. Like the SpeakEasy speed test was wrong.
Told me they were going to send out a tech. Gave me a window of 8 - 12. Gave them my cell. I'm going to work. Mike shows up at around 9:10 am. Abby is still home. Checks the outside equipment. Says he has to get some stuff. Goes away.
I go away. Have a fun weekend.
Come home Sunday night. Speed check. 6.2Mbps down, 435Mbps up. $32.95 a month. Rock on.
Abby checks voice mail. Mike called over the weekend. Upgraded the service. Left his cell phone number in the event we had any issues.
But remember, my wireless modem never showed up on Friday. So I called customer service (call #6) on Monday, cause AT&T's convenient for them customer service hours are 8 to 7 on weekdays. There was no record of an order. Lady places another order for the wireless modem. Tells me it will be here by Tuesday.
Tuesday comes and goes. No wireless modem. I am really not surprised. The rep that promised me that it would be
here was not able to provide me with a tracking number. Was
not able to send me a tracking number when I asked if she would do so
via email when it was available. Automated package tracking notification seems a
bit beyond AT&T's capabilities thus far in the 21st century.
So I called customer service (call #7) on Wednesday morning, cause AT&T's convenient
for them customer service hours are 8 to 7 on weekdays. Guy tells me he needs to transfer me to another queue. Puts me on hold for a bit. Comes back asks me to wait. Puts me on hold for a bit. Comes back and tells me to call back later. They are too busy. Gives me a specific number to call and tells me to call back later. When I tell him the number he gave me is the same number I called. He is dumbfounded. Tells me to call the number and select option #4.
I wait a few hours. I called customer service (call #8). There is no option #4. It is all voice activated. Get Ray. Nice lady. She can actually provide a tracking number. Wireless modem to be delivered today. The anticipation is killing me.
Got home tonight. Package is here. The anticipation is really killing me. Open the box. Wrong modem. It is the same silly single computer modem they sent when they slammed me, I'm sorry, activated my service without request.
I could not make this stuff up if I had to. But I might start a business selling unused AT&T modems on eBay.
Before I do that, I am gonna give Mike a call on his cell phone tomorrow. That will be call number 9. And this whole thing is starting to sound a little bit like that Beatles song.
I called AT&T to inquire about Internet service pricing last week. They slammed me. I figured this out last night when I got home and there was a package on the porch. Took it inside. Opened it. Saw a DSL modem. Livid.
This started 10 days ago. I made an inquiry to AT&T sales. Wanted to know how much it would cost me to bundle my Internet, phone, and television service. It was getting close to time to switch from EarthLink. Though you will not find it anywhere on their Web site EarthLink charges $49.95 for 3.0 Mpbs. AT&T is $30. I am loyal to EarthLink. But they are charging about 66% over market rate for the same level of service. It was time to switch and it was my intent to do so when Abby and the kids were off on their summer tour. Anyhow, the AT&T rep told me their pricing for various services and that I could immediately save $10 a month by switching phone service to something called Complete Choice Enhanced. I said sure and forgot about it.
On Monday night my Internet service went down. Seemed odd. Used to do that quite a lot back in the day. Not so much anymore. Decided to head off to work and give it a little time. When I got home it was still down. So I called EarthLink tech support. The rep did not speak English well. Made me do all the obvious things. Then something not so obvious. He asked me to switch phone jacks. Which is not the easiest thing to do in the world. I pinged. Googled the word idiot. It seemed to have worked. Odd that the jack would just go bad. But I started moving some network gear around to get all the computers online. Did not work. I checked all the jacks. None of them would give me PPPoE. Called back EarthLink tech support. The rep did not speak English well. I was told there was a widespread outage and my service would be down until midnight on Tuesday. Suggested I use dial up. Was a bit taken aback when I said that my computers did not have dial modems so that was not possible.
On Wednesday morning DSL was still down. So instead of calling EarthLink tech support, because the reps tend to not speak English well, I decided to have a chat session. Was told that the outage would continue to affect me for another 24 hours. And then I got home and opened the DSL modem. No prior notification that I had an account with them of any kind. No mail. Nothing. Just a DSL modem on my doorstep. And it's just a simple plug in one computer type of modem. Would not even work for my setup if I wanted it to.
Livid. So livid I think I scared my kids. Livid because AT&T slammed me and made my Internet service go down. To get semi-technical here, a DSL line can only be provisioned by one telephone company at a central office. If AT&T has a DSL line provisioned on the switch for your phone then EarthLink cannot. EarthLink had my line provisioned. AT&T put in the order to provision my line and essentially took down my DSL service.
Called AT&T. Asked for a sup. No love. Could not even tell me what level of service they signed me up for without my permission. Said I had to speak with customer service. Which of course is closed at night when normal people take care of such things (remember that convenient for us not the customer sin?). Denied that they had anything to do with my EarthLink service going down. Liar.
Called EarthLink tech support. The rep did not speak English well. With a little direction he figured out my line was "inactive". Transferred me to another phone queue. The queue that I was transferred to had a recording. "Not able to handle calls due to system outages." Great.
So I called AT&T customer service this morning. Explained what had happened. Guy was a jerk. Denied that they had anything to do with my EarthLink service going down. Liar. Hung up on him.
Called back, got a nice calm lady. Explained what happened. Found out I was signed up for 6.0Mpbs service. That I was currently being billed for the DSL service, and I was being billed $75 for the DSL modem that I did not order. Made a note in the account that I did not order the service and if I cancelled I would not be billed anything.
I cranked up EarthLink chat tech support. This is the conversation.
Shawn P: Your DSL line is turned off. lance@mindspring.com: why? Shawn P: You can contact our Installation Department and get it turned back. Shawn P: Seems your area is undergoing some changes on the phone line. Hence it happened. Shawn P: You can reach us at 1-888-EARTHLINK (1-888-327-8454), available Mon - Fri 7 a.m. to Midnight, ET Sat & Sun 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. ET. Shawn P: This is what I am going to do for you. Shawn P: I've kept a note on your account. Shawn P: Please phone them after few hours. Shawn P: It helps us to serve you quickly.
Quickly would be nice. It's been three days. I called the EarthLink tech support. The rep did not speak English well. He told me it would take five days to reprovision the account. I said no thanks. Tired to cancel. Guy would not let me. I hung up.
I called EarthLink tech support. The rep did not speak English well. Told the lady I wanted to cancel. Told her pricing was too high. And I swear it was just like the infamous AOL recording.
I very specifically had to say "cancel the account" seven times. Once she got finished with that she started to tell me about the final bill that I was going to be receiving. $49.95 for the period of June 16 - July 16. I tried to politely explain to her that she could not charge me for a service that was not being provided and that if she did so I was not going to pay it. She agreed to only charge me $25 because the phone company got the other half. Told her that was not my problem and that if they charged me anything I would not pay it and would walk down the street to EarthLink HQ and have a chat with the receptionist. I am not going to get billed.
So back to AT&T to see if they want my business. Explained to the rep what happened. Said if they did not do something to make up for this mess I would cancel all my AT&T business and go to Comcast. I got transferred to a specialist. Nina.
Nina from Atlanta. Nina in Atlanta. Nina in the office park where I take the kids to Taco Mac. Nina was nice. The first person I spoke to in this whole ordeal that was nice. Nina understood the semi-technical issue I described. Nina had empathy that I had been without Internet service since Monday. Nina cut me a deal. Nina is overnighting the proper modem. Nina fixed the problem. Nina kept me as a customer.
Nina was service. Service gets and keeps customers.
One of the mainstay features on FoG over the past two years has been the "quote of the week". It is a post that appears every Friday at noon (I tried 3:14 for a period, but noon works better). It started as a throwaway, something to get a quick and easy article up at the end of the week. Quotes are easy to find if you are looking for them.
It has evolved into a pretty popular series. One of the quote of the week posts generated more comments than any other article in the history of FoG. Heck I even used the quotes to create a presentation called "Startups in 12 Quotes" that generated over 2,700 views, 18 favs, and 9 embeds on slideshare.
But with the break from FoG I have also been thinking if I wanted to continue with the quote of the week feature. But instead of deciding by myself in some misguided self-absorbed vacuum, I thought I would ask the audience via a poll.
Please take a moment to take the poll. And comments beyond the poll are of course welcome.
I woke up to a little tweet from Tony, the CEO of Zappos, yesterday. The @missrouge refers to is Tara Hunt, who specializes in community marketing. Running 197 slides and introducing terms such as homo-feelgoodomicus, this presentation is amazing and a must view for anyone looking to build a successful business, be it online or off.
According to Tara the key to a successful business is helping homo-feedgoodomicus feel good. She goes on to outline seven reasons that happens is the key to success:
1. happy customers talk to more people about their positive experience; 2. unhappy customers talk to the MOST people about their negative experience; 3. happy customers are repeat customers; 4. happy customers will pay more for an awesome experience; 5. happy customers are loyal; 6. happy customers will drive your marketing for you; 7. happy employees are more productive, creative, and loyal.
Tara then lays out the pillars of happiness (autonomy, competence, relatedness, and self-esteem) and gives specific ways that you can increase each of these incorporating great case studies along the way (including Zappos of course).
The basic takeaway is that if you are aware of the principles of happiness when designing your product or service you can become an agent of happiness. And who wouldn't want that?
My summary does not do the presentation justice. While 197 slides may seem daunting, you can blow through them in 10 minutes. Putting them in action could last a lifetime.
The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone (with the exception of comments by others of course). They do not represent the opinion or position of any other person on entity. All postings adhere to my personal values.
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