In my blog post on financial transparency in start-ups a couple of days ago I referred to a blog post I wrote last year on how Path101 was becoming a ‘naked start-up’, blogging their Monday meetings and being fully open about their business. Nigel Burke pointed out in a comment that Path101 had soon discontinued this, and questioned how much of the supposed transparency was hype. Fair point.
I have put a comment on the Path101 blog to ask them about this – see below.
In short, certainly some of the shift to openness and transparency is rhetoric rather than reality (noteworthy being large companies that are nominally supporting initiatives such as dataportability but are in fact reluctant) . However there is still a very real ongoing trend to openness in business, including in start-ups. Balsamiq releasing its sales and Graham Dawson revealing his iPhone app revenue may be very small examples, but they are far from being alone in being willing to share. I absolutely believe that there are tangible advantages to what I call ‘strategic openness’, and this will be made clear by the leaders on this path.
Comment on Path 101 blog:
Hi guys,
I’m one of the people that blogged about Path101 as a ‘naked start-up’ back in October last year (https://bit.ly/aCeM).
I’d like to know, in what way are you a naked, transparent start-up now? Your blog is now just like any other start-up blog, sharing ideas and promoting yourself, but not giving any real insights into your journey as a company, or any details of your planning, fund-raising or anything else.
Blogging your Monday meetings was a very cool idea. So why did you stop doing that in December of last year?
Did you decide it was a bad idea, or did you just lose motivation to do it? I’m very interested to know.
There’s nothing wrong with being like other start-ups, but it is disappointing to see your early rhetoric of transparency and sharing what you’re learning on your entrepreneurial path quickly disappearing. Hopefully you’ll resume on your original transparent path, or if not others will take the lead on this, demonstrating to others why it creates value to be open.
[UPDATE 1:] Nigel Burke of Rusden who pointed out that rhetoric is not always matched by reality says that he has decided make his start-up naked, at: https://rusdensupdates.tumblr.com/. He says:
Following on from my comments on Ross Dawson’s blog I am moving to becoming more “naked”
I’m hoping to post my objectives, stats etc here at least once a week. I am also opening up my project hub where I keep my to-do’s and milestones; email projecthub@rusdens.com if you’re interested in a log-in.
The aim of this site is to produce feedback and develop relationships with potential peers, suppliers and customers.
Would love to know what you think – email nigel@rusdens.com with your comments
Fantastic.
[UPDATE 2:] Charlie from Path101 has responded to my comment and I’ve replied again.
Gartner on the Distributed Social Web
By Ross DawsonLast week I dropped in to the Gartner Symposium in Sydney, and managed to catch the session by David Cearley talking about the distributed social web, one of my favorite topics.
Overall it was a very good presentation, swiftly moving from the basics to a quite detailed view of the distributed social web, including pertinent views on the challenges of data portability. The presentation was entirely from a corporate perspective, looking at how companies should be thinking about integrating open social networks into their websites and customer interactions.
This issue is only now getting onto the radars of consumer marketing companies, and it will be a while before we see significant corporate initiatives in the space, with the social networking platforms themselves still working out where the space is going. However the open social web will become an increasingly prominent topic for consumer-oriented companies over the next few years. David’s conclusion – that the biggest risk is to fail to engage – is absolutely correct.
The style of David’s presentation, as for many research vendors, was to throw out a lot of detail, clearly to convince their clients that they can’t work it out for themselves and need consulting assistance. I suppose this is probably quite true in this particular space, where it’s extraordinary difficult for people even at the center of what’s happening to get their arms around it. However I will have a go myself over the next few months, in creating a successor to the Web 2.0 Framework that will look at the layers of social platforms and how to engage with them.
Below are the notes I took during David’s session:
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Rhetoric and realities of transparency
By Ross DawsonIn my blog post on financial transparency in start-ups a couple of days ago I referred to a blog post I wrote last year on how Path101 was becoming a ‘naked start-up’, blogging their Monday meetings and being fully open about their business. Nigel Burke pointed out in a comment that Path101 had soon discontinued this, and questioned how much of the supposed transparency was hype. Fair point.
I have put a comment on the Path101 blog to ask them about this – see below.
In short, certainly some of the shift to openness and transparency is rhetoric rather than reality (noteworthy being large companies that are nominally supporting initiatives such as dataportability but are in fact reluctant) . However there is still a very real ongoing trend to openness in business, including in start-ups. Balsamiq releasing its sales and Graham Dawson revealing his iPhone app revenue may be very small examples, but they are far from being alone in being willing to share. I absolutely believe that there are tangible advantages to what I call ‘strategic openness’, and this will be made clear by the leaders on this path.
Comment on Path 101 blog:
[UPDATE 1:] Nigel Burke of Rusden who pointed out that rhetoric is not always matched by reality says that he has decided make his start-up naked, at: https://rusdensupdates.tumblr.com/. He says:
Fantastic.
[UPDATE 2:] Charlie from Path101 has responded to my comment and I’ve replied again.
Detailed financial results from an iPhone developer: what they are earning
By Ross DawsonFollowing my post yesterday on financial transparency my brother Graham released complete sales and financial details for his OzWeather iPhone app. This should prove extremely useful to those who are developing iPhone apps or considering doing so.
Covered in his detailed post are daily revenue data since the app’s release, estimates of development costs, and comparison with advertising revenue from the initial web app.
The upshot is that Graham is currently earning around A$220 per day from the app, and if sales continue on current trends, he will get a pay-back on development costs of 2-3 months (though in this calculation he has used a per diem rate that is far less than a market rate for his skills).
Clearly the OzWeather app is a particularly high-quality app that meets a consumer need (though it has competitors).
Hopefully more iPhone and other software developers will release financial information, as Graham requests in his post. It makes it far easier for the entrepreneurial community to assess where they should be investing their energy, benefiting everyone.
The ‘Minority Report’ user interface is here
By Ross DawsonThe film Minority Report featured a user interface in which Tom Cruise’s character controlled computer screens and information using gestures, while wearing special gloves.
This was at the time the best representation of what I have long thought was a natural and inevitable direction for user interfaces. I’ve written about the shift to richer computer interfaces extensively over the years, including featuring Interfaces as one of the three technologies that will bring the networks to life in Chapter 2 of my 2002 book Living Networks, describing New Interfaces as one of the Six Trends that are transforming Living Online, and looking at the future of interfaces in mobile and home environments in the Future of the Media Lifecycle framework.
The film below shows the ‘g-speak’ technology in use. This is still transitional technology that will lead to broadly-used commercial applications, but definitely shows where things are heading.
g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.
Thanks to Engadget.
Financial transparency drives business results
By Ross DawsonWhen solo developer Peldi Guilizzoni launched web design mock-up tool Balsamiq in July, he promised to disclose his revenues, reports ReadWriteWeb.
He has just announced he has hit $100,000 in revenue in the last five months, with revenue on a very significant uptrend.
I am a big believer in business transparency, absolutely for public companies, and also in many cases for private companies. Transparency is one of the Seven MegaTrends of professional services I described in 2005, one of the Six Facets of the future of PR, central to investor relations, while the naked start-up is becoming more common.
Clearly Guilizzoni is going to make a lot more money because of his financial transparency, given the attention it’s attracting.
Secrecy has its place in business, but it is highly over-rated. In most cases there is no valid reason not to share information, just a disinclination to give away things. We are going to see transparent models increasingly favored moving forward. Certainly I find the reporting and accounts of many public companies to be extraordinarily opaque, giving little insight into the real drivers of business performance (a case in point being most non-US media companies). The most significant result is that investors shy away and shareholder value is lost.
‘Open book management’ is not a new idea, but the majority of companies are slow to shift on this front. I’m toying with the idea of a business model which includes publishing all company accounts on the web – hopefully this will be becoming more common by the time I get to this.
Check out Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration World on 24-25 November (and Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009 on 24 February!)
By Ross DawsonThe Australian event industry is quickly getting better from what was until recently a very low base. There are more quality events than ever.
A few months ago I was planning to run an Enterprise Social Network Strategy event in early December. Then I found out that a very similar high-quality event was already set for the week before. As such I cancelled my event and rolled what I was intending to cover into my next Enterprise 2.0 conference. I then spoke to the organizers of the November event, AC Events, to see if we could collaborate. We have worked out a great arrangement whereby we are together bringing two highly complementary events to the market.
Read more →
Getting successful iPhone apps to market: the experience of Oz Weather
By Ross DawsonMy brother Graham Dawson moved to Sydney at the beginning of this year. It’s been great to have him around, not least to tap his tech expertise!
Graham launched his first iPhone app on Sunday, and it’s already selling extremely well. It’s aimed at the Australian market and provides weather forecasts, detailed current weather and daily extremes, and an extremely nifty rain radar that provides timed moving images and centers on your current location.
Graham’s blog post Oz Weather goes live provides a full review of the app and Graham’s experience with the iPhone submission process – very interesting. He’ll have more up on his blog soon on what he’s learning as an iPhone app developer and marketer.
Also see the OzPDA site for info and access to the iTunes store for the app.
If you’re interested in the weather (including avoiding showers!), definitely download it.
See below for a video demo.
Webcast Keynote: Creating Business Value from Web 2.0
By Ross DawsonThis Thursday November 5 at 11am US Pacific Time I’ll be doing the keynote for a webcast on Creating Business Value from Web 2.0, targeted to the manufacturing sector. Webcast viewing is free with registration. The description of my presentation is:
Creating Business Value from Web 2.0
Business technology is being transformed. Web 2.0-style technologies that have emerged in the consumer space such as blogs, wikis, presence, RSS, and mashups are being adapted to enterprise use, changing how IT platforms support business success. The Web 2.0 Framework gives clarity into the tools and processes of Web 2.0 and how it creates business value. Applying the Web 2.0 Framework helps organizations to tap fully the insights of their knowledge workers, build more efficient processes, and get products to market faster. Six key steps to creating business value from Web 2.0 help executives to plan the path forward.
Following my keynote Tim Teeter, Product Marketing Manager from Epicor, and Scott Smith, Director of Technology from Epicor, will present how manufacturing companies specifically can apply Web 2.0 capabilities.
I’ll share some of my presentation here later.
Scenario planning: strategy for the future of global financial services
By Ross DawsonFor my keynote at the Vision 2020 Financial Services conference last month in Mumbai I prepared some ‘quick and dirty’ scenarios for the global financial services industry landscape in 2020 from a technology perspective. Below is an overview of the content I used in my presentation. The complete slide deck from my keynote is also available, though it needs the explanation as below.
Scenario planning
Scenario planning recognizes that beyond a certain degree of uncertainty forecasting is of limited value (or can even be detrimental to good decisions). The process of creating a set of relevant, plausible, and complementary scenarios (more than the scenarios themselves) can be invaluable in creating and implementing effective, responsive strategies.
The heart of the scenario planning process is distinguishing between Driving Forces (consistent long-term trends) and Critical Uncertainties (unpredictable elements). Once these are identified, they are brought together to create a set of scenarios that reflect both what you know and what you don’t know about how the environment will change.
The image below shows a sanitized version of the process for a scenario planning project I ran for a major financial institution. This was quite a streamlined process relative to a comprehensive scenario planning project, however was designed to bring the insights directly into the existing group and divisional strategy process.
Below are the scenarios in detail:
DRIVING FORCES: GLOBAL FINANCIAL SERVICES
1. Economic shift
Economic power is shifting to the major developing countries. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) together host close to half the world’s population, and their pace of economic development means that before long there will be multiple economic superpowers. In addition, global economic growth is shifting to the virtual, and developing countries will gradually wean themselves from primary and secondary industries to be significantly based on knowledge-based services.
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Web 2.0 is happening inside organizations anyway – time to recognize it and do it well
By Ross DawsonThe current issue of MIS magazine Australia has an excellent feature on Corporate Web 2.0 titled Meetings of 2.0 Minds, introduced with the words: The social communication tools of the web are making their irrevocably into today’s enterprise.
The piece begins with the example of how Bond University conducted an audit of use of Web 2.0 technologies, and “uncovered a vast, organic network of technologies already being used…”
The article goes on to quote me:
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