Category Archives: Business

Reading List August 18, 2005

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  • Innovating Once Again (A VC) – Fred Wilson points to Tom Evslin’s efforts to self-publish his book, but in a whole new way.  Fred calls it "Books 2.0" which is a play on the "Web 2.0" that is the du jour tech movement.
  • Self Publish or Perish (Fractals of Change) – Tom Evslin explains how he’s going to self -publish (see above), and also refrences some other notable self publishers in the online world.
  • WSJ: Self-Publish or Be Damned? Not Always (Andy Kessler) – The author recounts his self-publishing education and success.
  • Advice for Authors (Seth Godin) – Seth has some insights into publishing, best of which is publishing houses do best with authors that are already successful without them.
  • Media no More (Jeff Jarvis) – This is a very good post in which Jeff explores the world of media, and takes a hard look at what is happening to media as we know it.  In a nutshell he points out that in the case of non-fiction media is becoming conversational, or better put it is becoming two-way instead of one-way.  He also looks at what is happening in the fictional world and why he seems less patient with the oldest medium, the book, yet still wants to write one.
  • Enjoy Your Laundry (The Post Money Value) – A post about a positive customer experience.  The author has been staying at a Hampton Inn (which he gave positive reviews in a post last week) but they don’t have laundry facilities.  They sent him to the Embassy Suites next door, which led to a memorably good encounter with Shiela, the person manning the desk at Embassy Suites.  Let’s just say that they’re getting some of his business in the future.
  • Luxury’s Long Tail (Fast Company) – Is it still luxury if everyone can get one?
  • Einsteinovation (Reveries.com) – Even the most esoteric scientific ideas can have an impact on the real world.
  • Building the Perfect Team (Always On) – Tips on building a team at an entrepreneurial company, written by a serial entrepreneur.

Reading List August 11, 2005

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Reading List August 8, 2005

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  • Blogging As You Go Belly Up (BusinessWeek Online) – An entrepreneur starts blogging in May, just in time to chronicle his company’s demise and his impending personal bankruptcy.
  • Respond or Die (MicroPersuasion) – Steve Rubel takes the case of Google not talking to CNET and uses it as the basis for a post on why PR professionals need to respond to all media, including bloggers and citizen journalists.
  • "Search" Book Excerpt (John Battelle’s Searchblog) – This excerpt from Battelle’s book looks at how Bill Gross came to invent/develop pay-per-click advertising at GoTo.com (Overture).
  • The WiMax Imperative (Moore’s Lore) – Dana Blankenhorn on the meaning of the FCC’s ruling that the telecomm companies don’t have to lease their lines to competitors, and what wireless providers have to do to compete.
  • Indeed (A VC) – Fred Wilson’s group, Union Square Ventures, just invested in a paid job search service called Indeed (think Google Adwords for job boards).  In describing the investment he does a very good job of explaining the concept and rationale of paid job search.

Reading List July 26, 2005

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Reading List July 25, 2005

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Winston-Salem and Dell in the Register

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Dell’s revised land deal with Winston-Salem is the subject of a Register article with the headline, "Dell Sucks Another $7 Million Out of North Carolina."  Here’s a couple of excerpts:

Originally, Forsyth County and Winston-Salem officials had agreed to
front the cost of the 200-acre site housing Dell’s new plant. But
lawyers negotiating the deal grew concerned that, among other things,
the arrangement made it possible for Dell to sell and profit from land
the city bought. Hence the new deal in which Dell kind of, sort of pays
for the land but doesn’t really. The Winston-Salem City Council
approved the change this week and is in the process of signing new
contracts, The Register has learned.

"Now, Dell pays us directly for the land," said Derwick Paige,
assistant city manager of Winston-Salem confirmed in an interview with
us. "However, of the $7m that they pay us, we will put all the money in
a general fund and take $1.5m to put toward infrastructure improvements
and the other $5.5m we’ll give to them over a two year period in the
form of grants."

With the extra $7m, Dell’s total North Carolina incentives package
now comes to $284m. That’s $244m more than Virginia, the second leading
bidder for Dell’s factory, was reportedly willing to offer.

Dell’s package includes the land money, tax breaks, police
protection, special Dell training classes at local colleges, new roads
and a host of other fixes. In return, Dell could deliver as many as
1,600 jobs to the city, although it can fire close to half that amount
and maintain the package perks. Locals have complained that the company
has received unfair advantages that will harm smaller businesses. The
net benefit for employment in the city is far from clear.

Ouch.

Still, I have to say that even with all these incentives I’m still glad that Forsyth County won Dell.  Sure we probably overpaid, but the long-term economic affect is more than likely going to be very good.  Stay tuned.

Cross posted at Winston-Salem Business.

Today’s Reads: July 22, 2005

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Knowing Your Market

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If you’re going to open a coffee shop that doesn’t serve coffee, then doing so right outside the campus of Brigham Young University is probably the best place possible.

This story is getting a lot of notice for the obvious irony, but you have to be impressed with the owner.  Christin Johnson is a 22-year old English major at BYU and she opened Vermillion Skies De-cafe and Lounge six months ago.

Read the article and I think you’ll agree that she’s pretty creative about her business, and definitely worthy of the "Smart People" tag.

My buddy Rob should definitely stop by and have himself a non-caffeinated Coconut Ice Mochas during Cranky Hour (5-6 p.m.).

Egalitarianism Kills Companies

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Steve Rubel wrote a post talking about Jeff Jarvis’s recent troubles with Dell, and how Dell should do everything they can to make Jeff happy since he’s an "A-List" blogger.  For clarification, A-List bloggers are considered the most influential bloggers out there.

Most of the comments left on this post took issue with Steve’s assertion that Dell should spend more time worrying about Jeff than your "average" blogger because he is an A-Lister.  Here’s the text of one such comment:

"An A-lister??!" Comments like that undermine your assertion that
all (or at least most) companies, entities, etc., need to monitor the
blogosphere to help their customer support functions. Why should
companies monitor the blogosphere if it’s just a few of their customers
that deserve private jet tech support??

If you want to draw attention to and live in the world of an elite
group of "A-listers" then you’re not living by the same rules you’re
trying to sell to potential CooperKatz/Micro Persuasion clients. If
markets are conversations, don’t all the voices matter?

Treat some customers better than others because they may or may not
be blog "A-listers?" C’mon, Steve. I’d be embarrassed about this if I
were Jarvis.

To which Steve replied:

Joel, I definitely feel that ALL companies should listen to all
bloggers, but that doesn’t mean they should send out a plane to every
single person who complains. Jarvis having issues with his PC is really
bad – especially since he’s on TV a lot. He’s got a bigger megaphone
than most.

I have to back Steve up on this one.  Egalitarianism in business is NOT a good thing.  All customers are not created equal, and if a business doesn’t realize that then they won’t be in business for long.

There’s a fellow out there named Arthur Hughes who I used to work with many years ago.  He wrote books and articles on database marketing, and he made a compelling case for why companies should not treat all customers the same.  Without going into all the details let me summarize this way:  if you have one customer who spends $1,000 a month with you for five years and another customer who has spent $5 with you once over the same time frame would you treat them the same?  Should you spend the same amount of resources on the second customer as on the first?  If you do you’ll be much less profitable, if not out of business.

By the same token, if you have one customer who’s negative comment will be heard by 10 people or one customer who’s negative comment will be heard by 5,000 people would you treat them the same?  Of course not.  Sure even the least influential blogger has a better chance of being heard outside his own circle of friends and family than any non-blogger, but the reality is that A-List bloggers are guaranteed to be heard by many times more people than your average blogger.  Should you spend the same resources responding to the average complainant than to the A-Lister?  Not if you want to thrive.

Any business should definitely try to insure that all customers get their (fair) complaints resolved as effectively as possible, but when a business gets a complaint from someone with a big megaphone it should throw every resource possible at fixing the problem to minimize the damage to its image.  That’s just smart business.

Of course the bigger challenge these days is figuring out who has the big megaphones…but that’s for another post.

Dell Ticks Off Jeff Jarvis

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Dell, my home county’s (Forsyth County, NC) new big employer (and recipient of a rather generous incentive package from North Carolina and Forsyth County) ticked off Jeff Jarvis who happens to be one of the more prominent bloggers in the  U.S. Here’s his rant:

Dell lies. Dell sucks

: I just got a new Dell laptop and paid a fortune for the four-year, in-home service.

The machine is a lemon and the service is a lie.

I’m having all kinds of trouble with the hardware: overheats, network doesn’t work, maxes out on CPU usage. It’s a lemon.

But what really irks me is that they say if they sent someone to my
home — which I paid for — he wouldn’t have the parts, so I might as
well just send the machine in and lose it for 7-10 days — plus the
time going through this crap. So I have this new machine and paid for
them to F***** FIX IT IN MY HOUSE and they don’t and I lose it for two
weeks.

Publisher’s note: I added the asterisks after the "F" in the post.  I don’t have a problem with the F-bomb, but my mom and kids sometimes read this thing.

Me-thinks the Dell PR people, not to mention their customer service folks, might want to get in front of this one.

Update: Apparently Dell hasn’t done anything to quell Jeff’s rage.  Here’s some links to some follow-up posts with excerpts:

  • Jeff’s second post: But that’s what bothers me most: I bought that warranty, the top-of-the-line, most expensive warranty that warrants to send someone to my home to repair my machine.

    Except that’s a big fat Dell lie. The person they would send to my
    home would not have the parts (or, according to some of my commenters,
    the expertise, training, and intelligence) to repair that machine.

    Smells like fraud to me.

    Smells like a class-action suit to some of my commenters and emailers.

    Calling Mr. Spitzer. Calling Mr. Spitzer.

  • In his anger Jeff then posted a piece with a link to what he eventually discovered was a hoax about Dell installing keyloggers ont heir machine’s at the behest of Homeland Security.  Jeff’s commenters quickly set him straight, but you can see the effect of Dell’s action (or inaction) on a normally rational and very influential person.  Here’s the post in question:

    Dell hell, continued: Laptop 51

    : I have no way to verify whether this is true, but a commenter in my Dell laments says he found a spy in his laptop.

    It didn’t take two seconds to smoke the hoax: see the comments. I
    posted this on the train; found the nearest starbucks; came online and
    there was the fact-checking mob. Thanks, guys. Of course, something
    smelled funny but I’m glad you found the cheese. You’re better men than
    I, Gungas.

Where are the Dell damage-control/PR folks?

And now this on 6/24/05:

Dell sucks. Dell lies. Continued and continued and…

: I just got my Dell back. They replaced the system board, the CPU, the
memory, the palmrest assembly, the keyboard, and the wireless NIC.

Within a half hour, it’s proving not to work. The heat, according to
an ap my son found, is up to 154 degrees. The machine is overheating.
The fan is on high. And the CPU is running at 100 percent. Dell sucks.
Dell lies.

Dell makes lemons. No lemonade.

Dell sucks.