James Siminoff

OliverSiminoff.com

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:04:04 -0400

I bought my about to be born son the only gift that really matters (at least to a tech entrepreneur father) hisname.com.

I also set him up his very own Tumblr blog. So anyone that is interested in following the baby stuff we will be posting everything, pictures, videos, stories, etc. at www.OliverSiminoff.com.

Article about PhoneTag in today's issue of Newsday

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:13:28 -0400

Article about PhoneTag in today's issue of Newsday: Newsday is Long Island’s newspaper. They did a nice article today about voicemail to text, even nicer because they featured us:)

Lemonade stands are a great way for kids to begin to experience...

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:24:17 -0400

Lemonade stands are a great way for kids to begin to experience business and entrepreneurship. The below list brought me back to the days of sidewalk selling.

When I was a kid we used to sell painted shells on the boardwalk near our beach house. The goal was to make enough money to buy ice cream at the store for everyone working the shell stand

My parents were smart, they told us that we could not have ice cream unless we figured out a way to buy it for ourselves. Understanding that creativity and hard work would allow me to buy the things I wanted was a great lesson to learn at such a young age.

re-blogged from ffffood:

Lessons learned from NYC lemonade stand proprietors (New York):

FROM SCRATCH? DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME: “My family took lemons and squeezed and squeezed. We were sweating. But Alston’s family mixed powder with water. And the thing is, when you taste it, there’s really no difference.” (Fischer, age 10.)

LEMONS DON’T COME CHEAP THESE DAYS: “Last year, we charged 25 cents for a half cup and 50 cents for a whole cup. But this year, we had to double our prices. My mom said she was shocked at the price of lemons.” (Rebecca, age 8)

BY AGE 10, YOU’RE ALREADY WASHED UP: “The best age to start pouring is 6.” (Rebecca, again.)

PANDER TO YOUR CUSTOMERS: “When you spell things wrong, they say, ‘Oh, that’s cute.’” (Alston, age 10.)

LOW PRICES & VALUE COMBOS ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS: “My personal financial advice is 25 cents, because everyone can afford it. Even if your allowance is $1, you will be able to afford four glasses. Also, you can make a classy combo with Oreos, or do three glasses for 50 cents.” (Sam, age 10).

More great news on high gas prices

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:34:22 -0400

Image via Wikipedia

The benefits of expensive oil are continuing to come out. Ridership on Amtrack’s Portland to Boston “Downeaster” line is up 28%. This is the largest gain they have ever had in ridership.

Not only is the train more efficient transport but increased ridership takes cars off of the street, decreasing traffic and increasing overall efficiency of the transport network.

I fear that gas prices will either stabilize (a long period of stabilization will make the bite of today’s prices feel normal) or even go down in price before real alternative fuel policy is put in place.

Americans have a historically short memory when it comes to energy policy, more bad news on oil prices will be good news overall in my book.

For the first weekend in a while I have nothing to do, so I have...

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:42:31 -0400

For the first weekend in a while I have nothing to do, so I have been catching up on things.

Just ordered a water filter for the house, I had been meaning to do it for a while. I went over and spent some time with Jason Calacanis from Mahalo this week and when he showed me the office he pointed out how they switched to a water filter from bottled water. He should be a water filter sales person because they did a bunch of research and really found the best system. So since he made it so easy I just ordered the same one.

Well onto the next task, if you want to order the filter that Jason recommends go here.

Ycombinator is a VC firm/Incubator with a special twist, they...

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:53:10 -0400

Ycombinator is a VC firm/Incubator with a special twist, they make micro investments (around $30k) in founders with Ideas. They are fairly new and have had a lot of success so far. With things like computing clouds and Ruby on Rails it has become dirt cheap to get ideas into products with very little money. Starting cheap and running lean has always been my passion and that is why it is so interesting to watch things like Ycombinator.

They have posted a list of 30 ideas they would like to fund. Basically a call out to entrepreneurs that want to work on this stuff. Very smart and here is the list, they explain in more detail each item on their site (Click here).

1. A cure for the disease of which the RIAA is a symptom.

2. Simplified browsing.

3. New news.

4. Outsourced IT.

5. Enterprise software 2.0.

6. More variants of CRM.

7. Something your company needs that doesn’t exist.

8. Dating.

9. Photo/video sharing services.

10. Auctions.

11. Web Office apps.

12. Fix advertising.

13. Online learning.

14. Tools for measurement.

15. Off the shelf security.

16. A form of search that depends on design.

17. New payment methods.

18. The WebOS.

19. Application and/or data hosting.

20. Shopping guides.

21. Finance software for individuals and small businesses.

22. A web-based Excel/database hybrid.

23. More open alternatives to Wikipedia.

24. A buffer against bad customer service.

25. A Craigslist competitor.

26. Better video chat.

27. Hardware/software hybrids.

28. Fixing email overload.

29. Easy site builders for specific markets.

30. Startups for startups.

Thanks to AZspot for the heads up on this info

Motorola Claims Executive Now With Apple Took Secrets

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:55:13 -0400

Motorola Claims Executive Now With Apple Took Secrets: Sad that Motorola could not leverage their “secrets” as well as Apple did.

Richard Wolpert's Waverunner Adventure

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:43:00 -0400

A new friend in LA Richard Wolpert, who is an entrepreneur and venture advisor for Accel partners, just completed a solo long distance trip on his wave runner off the coast of Southern California, he did over 450 miles on the trip.

The open ocean can be dangerous in a boat I can not imagine what it would be like on a wave runner. You can see pictures and info about the trip at his blog here.

There is one quote that he wrote about the trip that I loved:

“Was so rough for the first 30 miles I could only go 10-15 mph. This was the first time I seriously questioned what I was doing. I had been out there for a few hours and my distance to go count had only gone from 80 to 60 and I was really getting beaten up.”

In almost every business I have ever launched you hit this point (usually more than once) where you say “What the F>ck am I doing?” Continuing to go forward against that pain typically results in great things and in my mind it is what separates real entrepreneurs from the wanna be’s.

Pushing beyond that breaking point and making success still happen is one of the things that real makes being an entrepreneur so satisfying.

Email marketing is tricky. If you have customers email and you...

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:27:00 -0400

Email marketing is tricky. If you have customers email and you do not send out email blasts it can be a huge waste of a very valuable asset, send out emails too much and you will piss your customers off or have them remove themselves from your list.

I have been buying some stuff from Crutchfield which if you are looking for audio/video stuff is really a great company. However they send me a marketing email at least once a week, it is ridiculous. So I have now unsubscribed.

It would have been much better for them to send me a list of big specials at a maximum of once every 2 months. Then I probably would not unsubscribe from them and might have even bought more then I would have otherwise.

Josh Kopelman did a great post that touches on this in May, you can click here to see it.

More bank losses?

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:29:39 -0400

Image via Wikipedia

While everyone is focused on the Mortgage market that is currently hitting the banks I wonder about another big source of loans that the banks have out which is leased vehicles.

I am not sure of the numbers but a large percentage of the big SUV’s that Americans have been loading up on for the last few years are leased. Banks set lease price based on the cost of capital and the residual value for the car. As many know, used SUV’s have plummeted in value due to high gas prices.

I currently have a Range Rover that is leased in NYC. The lease comes up this January. When the lease is up I will have paid approximately $42,000 to the bank over the last 30 months. My Range Rover which is a 2006 with around 30,000 miles is selling on eBay right now (which would be a retail price) for around $35,000. Banks always get wholesale pricing which is much less then retail, but even if they were to get retail on my car that would amount to $77,000 back to the bank which is less then the check that they had to write to the dealership when I leased it. They will almost for sure lose $10k-$20k on my lease.

I am not sure of the exposure out there for leases but after the mortgage losses additional lease write offs will not be good.

Angry users

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:08:40 -0400

Marco, who is one of the founders of Tumblr (the platform that this Blog is on) wrote the below post. It is about another really cool application that he developed called Instapaper.

Over the years of having customer facing businesses I have personally run into a lot of angry customers who have initially said things to me that would make Andrew Dice Clay (Sorry he is the first guy that came to mind) feel uncomfortable.

The interesting thing that I have found is that this group of insane customers overall are just really passionate people. By dealing with them properly you can turn them from being insanely hateful to your most passionate product advocates.

It is never easy to be beaten up by someone and still come back to them with a smile but trust me it is worth it to swallow the pride with these customers and put in the time to turn their impressions around. It only takes a few hundred passionate advocates to spread your product (for free) to thousands.

marco:

You wouldn’t believe how angry many people are when they send Instapaper.app support emails.

People seem personally offended that they don’t understand how something works. They swear at me. They insult me. They taunt me. They throw the problem back in my face with no explanation.

You can see a lot of this in the negative reviews of nearly any app in the App Store, too.

They refuse to read documentation right above the support-email link, then they email me with a question that’s answered right there.

It’s incredibly discouraging. I don’t think people realize that app developers are regular people, too. We make mistakes, we’re not perfect, and we didn’t mean to confuse you.

I can’t even imagine what these people’s tone will be like when I start charging money for a pro version. I just hope that the negative people don’t buy it. Of course, it looks like I should probably expect a bunch of 1-star reviews saying things like “stoopid you can get this for free! too much money! not worth $10 but maybe I’d pay $3!”

And my response...

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:36:00 -0400

I thought I should post my response to the email that was sent to me in my last post, I tried to have a little fun with it, I hope that the person I sent it to understands my sense of humour:

Dear XYZ,

If we decide to use your services would you also include our name to our competitors in your marketing emails? While you might have felt that this “punches” up your email it quickly shows me that your company is not interested in holding your customers info confidential (I am almost sure that your are violating agreements with both COMPETITOR and COMPETITOR by disclosing your relationship in this email).

Now that we have that out of the way, send over your pricing and I will look at it.

Jamie

Selling 101

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:19:00 -0400

I grow more tired by the day of companies contacting me that work with my competitors and touting that fact. I have mentioned it before so sorry for the repetitiveness of this post but it really is a pet peeve of mine.

Adding competitors names is not a show of strength at all, it just shows that as soon as you get my account you will use that info to give to my next competitor.

Here is an email I received today, all they had to do was say that other companies in my industry use them and that because of that we might find them a good vendor to work with. (I have protected the anonymity of the person and the company)

Hello Jamie,

I would like to introduce myself and XXXXX to your company because I could imagine that we could be of interest for you.

We currently supply our telecom access products to (NAMING COPETITORS HERE) and other similar Voice Messaging companies in several countries.

I was wondering if you are interested in our global coverage, especially in case you are planning to extend your service to other countries soon.

If you have any questions or you would like to test some of our numbers, please let me know and I will get in touch with you.

Best regards,

Account rep that does not keep things in confidence

"“The economy may or may not be in a recession, but it clearly sucks for large parts of the..."

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:51:45 -0400

“

“The economy may or may not be in a recession, but it clearly sucks for large parts of the US.

And yet in our business we are seeing a lot of bullishness. Our companies are growing, revenues are up not down. “

”

- Fred Wilson

Read the rest of Fred’s great post on his view of the state of the economy by clicking here.

The Dow is at 7,700 today, seriously

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:55:00 -0400

Image via Wikipedia

I did a post over the weekend about the Dow and where it is based on historic levels. My brother gave me an interesting twist on the post when I spoke to him about it.

So the first time the dow closed above 11,000 was in May of 1999. Right now (at 3pm) the Dow is at 11,042.

However that is not the whole story, when the Dow closed at 11,000 in May of 1999 the dollar was worth a lot more. So if you equalize for the loss of value in the dollar the May 1999 (based on the Euro) the Dow is actually at 7,700 today.

I am very positive on the future of the US economy and future opportunities to create wealth but it is crazy to see that a single Euro invested in the Dow almost 10 years ago would be worth less then 0.70 today.

Oil Policies-Long term thinking

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:49:00 -0400

On CNBC right now there is a discussion about Bush’s decision to open up additional offshore drilling, which is a knee jerk reaction to high oil prices. Offshore drilling takes so long to actual produce oil that doing this is of little consequence.

If the US was a company it would have been bankrupt a long time ago. The best CEO’s look ahead at the macro issues and create policies today to insure that the future will be bright. You see this style of leadership and thought in many of the world’s greatest and most dynamic companies.

It is incredible how much the US (under both Democratic and Republican control) has allowed one of our most important resources, energy, to become the world’s noose around our economy.

Whoever wins the next election I just hope that they have the intelligence to put the right policies and people in charge of things to set in place the policies which will bring the US back to some level of leadership in the world.

This was a pretty funny post by Ben Stein. However he has his...

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:36:26 -0400

This was a pretty funny post by Ben Stein. However he has his dates wrong it is actually showing 1999…

It is incredible to see that the first time the Dow closed above 11,000 was on May 7th, 1999. We are basically back to that level today almost 10 years later.

On the flip side I have never seen as much opportunity in the world to make money as I do today. This is a great time to get out there and start a company, business, technology, etc.

huge:

Bloomberg iphone app is broken. It keeps showing the Dow’s price from 2005

have to love the irony…

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:13:00 -0400

have to love the irony…

I just saw an ad for this on CNBC. T. Boone Pickens has made a...

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:39:00 -0400

I just saw an ad for this on CNBC. T. Boone Pickens has made a billion dollar fortune in oil and now seems to be putting all of his energy and influence into getting the US off of our dependency from foreign oil. The video is very cool, I like this guy and hope that he succeeds in his plan. For more go to www.pickensplan.com

The TWIT podcat this week talked about Michael Arrington’s...

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:41:10 -0400

The TWIT podcat this week talked about Michael Arrington’s post on Voicemail. Jason Calacanis made a great mention about PhoneTag and how when he calls Fred Wilson’s phone he always tries to leave funny messages and that Fred then sends the transcriptions back to Jason to see.

How cool is it that on TWIT Jason is talking about playing games with Fred using PhoneTag. Things like this really make me and the team smile, thanks for the sharing the story on TWIT Jason!