James Siminoff RSS

I am the CSO of Ditech Networks Nasdaq (DITC) the founder and former CEO of PhoneTag, founder/principal in NobelBiz and founder/chief evangelist of GRID.com. This blog is about my life as a serial entrepreneur, husband, traveler, inventor and father.

jsiminoff@PhoneTag.com








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Aug
3rd
Tue
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I saw this watch advertised in a magazine at the airport lounge.  There are lots of historical finds that could be cool to make a watch out of but to me the titanic is not one of them.
What would I say when someone asked me about the watch “This watch was made from the steel of the Titanic, a ship that sunk on its maiden voyage and was responsible for the deaths of over 1,500 people.”
Weird…

I saw this watch advertised in a magazine at the airport lounge.  There are lots of historical finds that could be cool to make a watch out of but to me the titanic is not one of them.

What would I say when someone asked me about the watch “This watch was made from the steel of the Titanic, a ship that sunk on its maiden voyage and was responsible for the deaths of over 1,500 people.”

Weird…

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Aug
2nd
Mon
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Reason to Not Not Do a Startup: The Idea

Good post on why ideas are really the commodity.  Execution is all that matters, it is long, hard and not as sexy but that is where the meat of a startups success is.

 viacaterpillarcowboy: via thegongshow:

Sometimes I ask people I know in my life who I believe would be good entrepreneurs, “have you thought about doing a startup?” I common response to this question is, “Yes, but I don’t feel like I have a good idea.”

I typically let the conversation end right there, because I would never push someone to do a startup that is hesitant.  A good entrepreneur has an undeniable drive, a hunger to bust through brick walls and make their startup successful. It’s not possible to try to convince someone with logic to adopt that often-irrational entrepreneurial frame of mind.

But, if I were to continue the conversation, I don’t think a lack of a good idea is a reason to not do a startup. Want a good idea? Here’s 30 great ones that Paul Graham wants to fund. Why would Paul Graham just give away 30 great ideas for free? Because the value of a business is not in the idea. In an early stage company, the value is in the people involved.

It’s the same reason that anytime I have a startup idea, I immediately write a blog post about it here.  I know that ideas are cheap, and additionally, ideas get better as people contribute feedback to them, shape them, and make them their own. I’d love to see a great team make any of the nagging startup ideas banging around in the back of my head a reality.

Entrepreneurs almost never take a startup from idea to full execution in a straight line.  The idea is a just a starting point from which people weave and bob around as they try to figure out where the money is in a new market they are creating, or existing market they are co-opting.

The converse is true here too.  If you’re really passionate about doing a startup because you think you have a great idea, you are actually starting with very little. In fact, the passion you have is very likely far more valuable than the idea itself. So, I would never discourage someone in that position, but my advice at that stage is typically: go get the 2 or 3 smartest people you know and run with the idea. Because people are so important, it’s really difficult to give the idea a fair shot if you do it alone.

JFDI

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At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black.
— From Today’s New York Times Article Plagirism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age by TRIP GABRIEL
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Jul
28th
Wed
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Corporate profits are up, but where are the jobs?
This is a interesting thing that I have been seeing also.  Unemployment it up yet companies are making record profits.  To me what it shows is that we had a situation of over employment before the economic downturn.  And not just over employment in terms of headcount but also job level and salaries.
Not sure what all of this means on a macro level but it certainly feels a bit weird right now.
via azspot

Corporate profits are up, but where are the jobs?

This is a interesting thing that I have been seeing also.  Unemployment it up yet companies are making record profits.  To me what it shows is that we had a situation of over employment before the economic downturn.  And not just over employment in terms of headcount but also job level and salaries.

Not sure what all of this means on a macro level but it certainly feels a bit weird right now.

via azspot

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It is almost impossible to know what the market wants without putting the product/service out there to be used and abused.  Feedback is awesome and in my startups MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a religion.
via arig via jared via startupquote)

It is almost impossible to know what the market wants without putting the product/service out there to be used and abused.  Feedback is awesome and in my startups MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a religion.

via arig via jared via startupquote)

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Jul
27th
Tue
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amen!
startupquote:

Projections are bullshit. They’re just guesses.
- Jason Fried

amen!

startupquote:

Projections are bullshit. They’re just guesses.

- Jason Fried

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Jul
26th
Mon
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Swipen with the Swipely

I started using a new social sharing service called Swipely a few weeks ago.  The service takes charges on your credit cards and allows you to expose them to a sort of Facebook like news feed.  Now before you freak out about privacy, they give you enough control on what you want to post and strip out private information so basically people can just see where you were and when you were there.

It is sort of like Foursquare, in essence I feel like I am checking in, but since I am too lazy to do that this is much better for me.  So everywhere I swipe my credit card gets posted to a feed which can then become a discussion.

For example, I bought a satellite tracking device called Spot.  This is what that looked like on Swipely:

As you can see a conversation then came out of that purchase.  This social discussion from specific purchases is really fun and leads to lots of great findings.  In fact I have already found a few restaurants by following other people on Swipely that I am going to try out.

I think that this service has the right mixture of privacy, automagic and information to really become a powerful social place in the future.  The service is currently in private beta, if you want a invite ping me.  It is definitely one of those things that you have to try to get a feel for why it is so cool.

——

Just to avoid any comments about the competing service Blippy.  I tried the service and just did not like it as much as Swipely, for many reasons I think that Swipely has figured out the perfect mix in this arena.

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Jul
25th
Sun
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This is a awesome story.
bryc3:

Jens Voight wins my vote for MVP of the Tour de France this year. He had my vote early on after watching him absolutely destroy himself on some nasty climbs to put his team lead, Andy Schleck, into position to take the yellow jersey. But yesterday sealed the deal.
After having a tire blow out on a fast descent forcing a  crash that would send most mortals to the hospital and out of the race he was stranded. His team cars had left him behind and his bike was torn to shreds on impact. Rather than fold it up, he was able to borrow a kids bike with old school toe clips pedals to catch up to his team car, swap to a real bike and finish the race. 
Whether you’re into cycling or not, this is the kind of drive you want to embody.
Full story here.

This is a awesome story.

bryc3:

Jens Voight wins my vote for MVP of the Tour de France this year. He had my vote early on after watching him absolutely destroy himself on some nasty climbs to put his team lead, Andy Schleck, into position to take the yellow jersey. But yesterday sealed the deal.

After having a tire blow out on a fast descent forcing a  crash that would send most mortals to the hospital and out of the race he was stranded. His team cars had left him behind and his bike was torn to shreds on impact. Rather than fold it up, he was able to borrow a kids bike with old school toe clips pedals to catch up to his team car, swap to a real bike and finish the race. 

Whether you’re into cycling or not, this is the kind of drive you want to embody.

Full story here.

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Jul
24th
Sat
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You have to do what it takes to have your company succeed. A great tip would be to try new ideas you can implement that doesn’t need much developer help initially. If it works, you’ll have more reason to get more developers and grow the idea. Remember, a successful idea can always grow.

Joseph Sunga Biz Dev Manager at TeachStreet

This quote comes from his larger post, 5 Lessons Learned While At Teachstreet.com.  It is a awesome post and worth a read of the entire thing.  This quote really stuck out for me though.  Typically the biggest excuse in getting anything out in a start up is programmers.  But many times it is a lazy excuse as you can manually do a lot more then you think if you are creative.  The benefit of doing that is you kill things before programmers waste time on them and if they take off your programmers are working on what is going to work.

Programmers are almost always the most valuable resource in a start up and anything you can do to get more efficiency out of them can be a real competitive advantage.

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Jul
23rd
Fri
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What is most incredible about this chart is how quickly Jobs has been able to add successful and meaningful lines of business to Apple.  It would be cool to see this chart going back to 119 or something like that to show the growth of each line of business.
If you then overlaid a chart of Google and its efforts to expand into different categories you would really see how impressive this is.  Over basically the same amount of time Google has added a lot of shit but their revenue is still almost entirely on search term ads. 
via mikehudack via peterwknox

What is most incredible about this chart is how quickly Jobs has been able to add successful and meaningful lines of business to Apple.  It would be cool to see this chart going back to 119 or something like that to show the growth of each line of business.

If you then overlaid a chart of Google and its efforts to expand into different categories you would really see how impressive this is.  Over basically the same amount of time Google has added a lot of shit but their revenue is still almost entirely on search term ads. 

via mikehudack via peterwknox

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Jul
22nd
Thu
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A Really Great Movie

Last night I went to the screening of Erin’s newest movie Ramona and Beezus based on a series of books written by Beverly Cleary.  I am definitely not the target audience but it was really fun and the movie had a great flow to it.

Erin worked really hard on this movie, it was a project that was many years in the making.  In Variety (a prominent industry magazine) they said, “Ultimately, helmer Allen credits the Fox 2000 team — particularly Gabler and Siminoff — for championing the little film that could.”

This film was made for peanuts, reportedly $15 million.  In relation to the world that I work in (tech startups) this was a very bootstrapped.  But even with that low budget they were able to pack the movie with big talent and create a A+ product.

If I sound proud, well sorry but I am.  While of course there was a team of people involved to make this movie a success, she definitely was a major driving force and that is awesome.

The movie comes out tomorrow, it is your duty to go see it and donate to what will hopefully be a HUGE opening weekend!

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Jul
21st
Wed
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The Lottery of Startups

Last week on a hike with friends I was explaining to someone how my view towards startups is that I am never going to win the lottery.  What I meant by this is that I am never expecting some crazy break away success to happen to me.  So I always build with a rational model that will work with low investment to test the idea and even get to break even before too much investment is incinerated.

Then 2 days ago Mark Suster wrote a post about happiness and said:

“Startups are hard.  When you read the press you only read the glamorous bits.  You read about Mark Zuckerberg or the guys at FourSquare, Twitter or Zynga.  But that’s a bit like reading about your state lottery winner and feeling bummed out because you haven’t won despite years of trying.”

I sort of felt like Mark might have bugged my hike because that is exactly what I said.  In fact I used Facebook as my example.  While I was in college in 1999 people were building social college sites like Facebook.  I am not sure of the exact number of sites like this but I would guess that well over 100 people tried to build a site like Facebook which all ended dead, Zuckerberg’s took off and has since made him one of the richest people in the world.

I think one of the most important points I have learned in the last 10 years of having my teeth kicked in doing startups is to see through the bullshit.  Thinking that you are a lottery winner when doing a startup is delusional and can get you in trouble.

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Jul
20th
Tue
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Is .Com Dead?

This weekend while on TechCrunch I saw this ad from GoDaddy about the new domain extension .co:

There is an ever increasing amount of Generic Top Level Domains (GTLD), as of right now there are over 20, these include extensions like .info, .jobs and .biz.  In addition to the generics each country has a domain, for example bit.ly uses Libya’s extension .ly and VC blogger Mark Suster uses Spain’s .es extension for his site, bothsid.es.  The trend towards using alternative extensions continues to gain tractions as fewer and fewer .com’s are available.

ICANN, the group that manages these top level domains is going to be increasing the number of these dramatically, allowing anyone with a nice sized check to have their own top level domain, for example ATT could have .att.

As the number of extensions increase I keep hearing that the value of .com’s should go down.  That would be bad for me as I continue buying in the aftermarket what I consider to be valuable .com addresses.

But there is a method to my madness.  I actually expect the opposite to happen, as the number of options increases the value of .com will go up.  Why?  Because I think that the average consumer is confused as shit by all of these other extensions, which is only going to get worse.

I associate .com with being the Rodeo Drive of the internet in terms of location.  While you can be  successful with an alternative domain, I think you will always be fighting an uphill battle with anything other than a .com. 

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Jul
19th
Mon
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I like that Discovery channel always seems to be coming up with cool creative stuff.  It is by far my favorite channel.  
mikehudack:

vneckandacardigan:

Discovery Channel’s main office building is transformed for Shark Week 2010

Wait until you see the shit they sent me to promote season two of The Colony.  Crazy.

I like that Discovery channel always seems to be coming up with cool creative stuff.  It is by far my favorite channel.  

mikehudack:

vneckandacardigan:

Discovery Channel’s main office building is transformed for Shark Week 2010

Wait until you see the shit they sent me to promote season two of The Colony. Crazy.

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Jul
17th
Sat
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Saturday:)

Saturday:)

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