Aprizi has been in open beta for six weeks now. These last six weeks have been an intense blur, a fire hose of information, and going open beta was the best possible thing we could have done. We are making some fairly big near-term changes because of this process. Here are 8 thoughts on the latest phase of our customer …
My Take on the iPad
I held off prognosticating on the iPad. I was not even planning on buying the first generation. That changed when someone demoed my own product to me over lunch. I love this thing and, if you aren’t bored of hearing about the iPad, you can read below for my reasons why: Sales: a laptop is a horrible thing during a …
Are Game Dynamics Jumping the Shark?
AdAge today asks “What’s saving the current crop of virtual games from becoming the next Second Life?”, with their answer being game dynamics. I am a huge believer in the power of creatively designed incentives and game-like compulsion loops, but I suspect enthusiasm for badges, levels and points have hit “fad” and “over-reliance” territory. Foursquare, for example, used gaming very …
Monday Musings and The New York Times
Aprizi appeared in The New York Times today, in an article on privacy and innovation for consumers. In my quote, I tried to emphasize that this is about an honorable agreement with the customer, not some kind of bait and switch. There is a new wave of startups where everything is above-board and totally opt-in. As a consumer myself, I …
The Cold Reality of First-Time Funding
Earlier today, I watched Fred Wilson and Ben Horowitz debate lean vs fat fundraising approaches (very different from “lean startup” concepts even if often confused). The reality is very very simple: unless you are a celebrity/proven founder, “lean” is your only option. I don’t buy for a second that Horowitz would write a “fat” check to an unproven entrepreneur no …
Trends with the Sample Sale Sites
Last night I attended the Fashion 2.0 meetup in New York. Needless to say, it was *quite* a different scene from the Lean Startup meetup the night before. The fashion panel (with some bright people like Suzanne Norris of Kate Spade, Florent Peyre of Elle/HFM, Steve Hafner of Kayak, and Apar Kothari of MyNines) helped round out my thoughts about …
Lean Startup “Marketing Bullshit”
Venture Hacks‘ daily email delivered an enjoyable post by Sean Fioritto called “Steve Blank is my hero“, exhorting the Hacker News readership to pay attention to Blank’s philosophies. Sean’s explanation of resistance jumped off the screen at me: “if you can’t see through the halo of marketing bullshit to the nuggets of genius underneath…” “I sometimes worry that the Hacker …
Git it done (the joy of wearing many hats)
The good folks at Venture Hacks tweeted a piece from the WePay blog about things a non-engineer founder should know. His points tie in nicely with the struggle many business people have in taking their grand idea and shrinking it down to an actionable, minimal first version. I wanted to touch on tasks for a non-coder in the super-early stages …
Coming up with a startup name (i.e. the 6th circle of hell)
Few things are more painful than coming up with a good yet inexpensive name for a business on the Web. Somehow you need to find something that is “cocktail party friendly” (i.e. someone can hear it, spell it, remember it), search engine friendly (i.e. type it in and have a shot at appearing high on list), and yet available / …
Our Customer Development Journey, part 3
Aprizi is about to enter that crucial phase of open beta, so I wanted to pause and write down the latest installment in our customer development journey (part 1 and 2). For anyone new to the blog, Aprizi is building a personalization engine for online shopping — a Pandora for e-commerce, if you will. My thesis is that the intersection …