bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

This is often one of the first questions from kiwi entrepreneurs, and it’s an interesting one.

Firstly, of entrepreneurs as a class the ones we often look up to don’t have to deal with this challenge. The challenge of conquering a market other than the one you grew up in.

Elon Musk – smashed it, in America.

Richard Branson, dominated for 20 years in the UK (now global).

Kiwi entrepreneurs have to crack that from very early on and come from a smaller market. The american mindset is any market outside of the US is smaller than home base, kiwis are the opposite every market outside is bigger – it is highly unlikely going to another market will have less opportunity. The challenges of this process are numerous:

1) Everything is different.

2) Different taxation, business law.

3) Cultural differences (even in English speaking countries)

And underpinning that is building a new network, brand, reputation, all of which takes time, at least 4-5 years in my experience. Why that long? It just takes that long to establish any business.

Thus, as a kiwi entrepreneur you’re always conscious that you do have to get in to different markets which is an additional challenge. On top of carving a business out of nothing.

But back to, why not Australia?

It’s often the first port of call, the idea is to not stretch yourself too thin and closer to home. In reality what I find is that people take it less seriously. They think send over one guy, the thinking is ‘we can fly over if need be’ have a meeting or two, and then if they hit a rocky road they just stay in NZ more.

If you’re going to take it seriously, you need to commit, setting it up so it’s safe to return home is almost preparing it for failure before you’ve started.

I’m all for caution but if you’d done your diligence and know you can make it a success don’t dilly dally around!

Whilst setting up hasn’t been easy, if we were close to home I’m sure someone would have decided to call it quits by now. It is hard. It should be for all the reasons above. However if you want to commit, do it properly.

Going further afield makes the organisation take the change more seriously and treats it as such.

Having a co-founder step out of day to day is quite a process, we worked with the team to find out what intangibles I provided, then sought to cover those through a more balanced leadership team (and in turn balancing the personalities of the team).

All of which I’m not sure we would have done was I just popping across the ditch.

There has to be one right? This is it.

A few friends & readers have been prodding – where are the posts? What’s been happening.

So, lets get up to date.

==

15 August 2013

My wife Esther & I shifted to New York, to help establish an offshoot of Young & Shand, our product division. Our long term focus has been to build a global business from New Zealand. To do that, you need to find scalable intellectual property. So as Y&S has grown, where we couldn’t find off the shelf products we’d build them.

Long story short, Nudge was our first that had momentum. So, that was my focus.

Arriving up here, the aim was to get meetings, get the product in front of it and sell it. Boom! Then golf.

Well not really – but so I did the first 100 or so meetings, we got mainly no, a few yes. Those that said yes we went into a few campaigns but they fell apart, for a number of reasons. The key thing was, in a more specialized highly scalable market our product was doing too much. We had too many features and then by consequence not enough impact.

So we had to slim down the product, so we did that, finding a feature which was innovative yet untapped in the US. So we built a very lite (and ugly version) to prove the case. Upon doing so, the pitches began again, rustling up meetings. We got our first case study.

This helped us validate the feature set, the use case, and off we begun iterating, since then we have narrowed the focus down further and further, whilst removing features increasing impact, focus and value.

So that’s what I’ve been doing – tearing down obstacles. It’s been a big adjustment, doing business in the US is as culturally different to New Zealand as doing business in Thailand, as an entrepreneur I’ve had to adapt; change focus, had to start from scratch – building a brand, a network, a new way of doing business. As well as uprooting my personal life, meaning new habits (new food), social life.

In short an incredible year of change.

And now it’s time to share some of those learnings, adjustments and what we’re up to now. So I’ll keep them coming through. And if you’re on Medium, here’s one long post [17 min read time], on my big goal this year.

Talk soon.

It won’t.

Change will keep going.

Like Marc Andreessen shares in this great post This is Probably a Good Time to Say That I Don’t Believe Robots Will Eat All the Jobs … as long as our ability to change our horizons keeps up, so will our horizons.

Kevin Kelly talks about this in his book What Technology Wants – and that’s to keep evolving, it’s a very philosophical take on the growth of technology.

BusinessInsider touches on this too – The Next 20 Years Are Going To Make The Last 20 Look Like We Accomplished Nothing In Tech.

All good reads.

It’s an interesting thing to think about.  An exciting time to be alive.  An even more exciting time in the modern day to be able to influence and contribute to that change!

..

And not management frameworks & structures.

Just tangible things you can do today to promote excellence.

The Little Big Things

I read it when it came out and just keep quoting it over and over.  We even use it to help people who are growing into management roles, to help show them things they should be doing, and it helps them get started.

That is, pressure forces change & innovation.  A time to rethink things.

I love this JP Morgan quote:

Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see farther.

Which is the same, go there, stretch yourself.  Then see what you can see.

When I have a problem that I’m chewing on, I’ll go for a walk.  Typically by the end of a walk I’ve cracked the problem or figured out what the next step to getting to the solution is.  Its simple and it works.  Stanfords recent study mirrors this by  showing that walking increases creativity.

A person walking indoors – on a treadmill in a room facing a blank wall – or walking outdoors in the fresh air produced twice as many creative responses compared to a person sitting down, one of the experiments found.

Crazy – even walking indoors in a room with a blank wall, aka no external stimulus other than walking did it.

I’m also reading Daily Rituals of Artists, one thing that stood out for me is how much time they dedicated to just going on a walk.  Often up to 90 minutes giving their mind time to roam, to relax and enjoy life.

Steve Jobs was noted to instead of having a meeting go on a walk with whoever he was meeting with.

Why? That’s yet to be fully established – and as to whether other physical activities increase or decrease the effect has yet to be proven.

But that’s enough for me.  Get some more walking into your daily rhythm.  I’m definitely going to.

Why not, a delayed tip, if you’re still happy in a couple of hours you will tip a bit more, or if you’re not happy you’ll tip a bit less.

For hairdressers – that makes sense.
For things like massages, not so much.
Car service – makes sense.

It’s something to think about.

It makes giving back a habit.

And that’s the best way to evoke change, is to make the things which are creating the change a habit (read Charles Duhigg).  You often can’t control the outcome but you can control the inputs that go in to doing it.

That’s why, things like Toms monthly coffee is interesting. you can support the cause and in an ongoing fashion.

Set it up. and it becomes a habit.

I like it.  If you do too, here’s some others I do:

• Kiva
• Soma
• LSTN Headphones

I was browsing the Vancouver Art Gallery last week, and saw a few kids running through.

They were reasonably bored. Not surprising.

I never got art growing up, we had an art class and I thought art was about drawing – reflecting on that I wonder how we get kids into art, so that they understand what it is and what it means.

Thus the idea for a children’s art gallery, a gallery aimed at getting kids interested… funnily enough LegoLand is kind of like that.

What else should / could we get the next generation into early enough?

It was really curious to see the leaks about the NY Times Innovation last week.  It’s a good read, just for how real it is.

The reality though, despite the content of the leaks, the act itself is going to drive change.

Clearly, internally, they are at a point of hey we need help to get the Times to see for itself and to get an outside perspective on how we need to change.

This will be noted as either a moment in time whereby they turned the corner and hit their stride.  Or didn’t.  I’m confident it’ll be the former.

The Times is able to attract some of the best & the brightest – they just need to empower them to take the organisation where it needs to go.

What I think they can forget, is that the world references what the Times are up to, I was in New Zealand the week before last and people were asking what the publishers were up to over here.  This is a great privilege but also a responsibility.  A responsibility to help guide & lead the sector through the rapid changes in the market.

The next six months should be interesting.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. – Steve Jobs

Iterative change over time builds up so much that you need to sit down and have a clean slate.

A review of where we are now, where we want to go and how we get there.  To connect the dots that got you here.

• For leadership, this could be a new CEO, to come in and take the company forward.
• For systems, it could be a new tool which acknowledges the past but has the platform for the future.
• For culture, it means embracing all the little changes and bedding it down into the DNA of the company.

This is a good thing, it’s the natural progression, it’s how organizations move forward.  Otherwise they lose sight of the lessons they’ve learnt to get where they are.  Long term sustainable success is by building forward momentum, so you’re not repeating the mistakes of the past.

We’ve been playing around with Machine Learning, to help uncover patterns in content.

And there’s two significant components
1) Definition
2) How variables stack up against that definition

You can look at the elements, imagine you want to use machine learning to find out how to build a good car.

You would load up all the good cars, that within itself is a definition, what is good?

It could be design lead, which could be established through design awards, or design nominations, it could be sales, it could be publicity.

Something quantifiable.

Then you break down it down to detect all the variables that make up a good car, things like four wheels, the gradient of the curves, acceleration, weight, colour.

This helps you then understand what a good car looks like.

But good is subjective.

Just remember that, data analysis is great but it always comes back to what are we doing it for.

I heard the Ari of TripleLift give their pitch a while back.

Their argument is the web is becoming image centric. Just take a look at:
Pinterest
Instagram
Any publishers site

And there’s a lot of truth to that, we’ve always heard an image tells a thousand words, in a web of ever increasing content being able to convey your message quicker, consistently & concisely is important.

Images are a great way of doing that.

Something to think about, how do we get more visual in our communications, how can we say more with less, what do our images say about us?

I’m forever finding new tools, software and shortcuts to help me work more effectively.

A few weeks back I received a notification, look at this 6 months from now, it was an internal review.  This was powered by FollowUpThen, a simple app which notifies when you need to follow up on something.

It works like this:

1) You forward or cc them in on an email

2) Put the date at the front of the email i.e. 6months@followupthen.com

3) They then confirm the email and send it back to you on that date.

It’s the ultimate getting things done trick, get things off your plate which are deferred and you’ll get them back when you need them.

I was thinking about this last night – upon hearing the news of the Amazon set top box that’s rumored to release next week.

What happens when you have a fully digital tv experience, with ads you can engage with?

Here’s what happens:

1) Real Time Bidding
I was at an Ad:Tech session about this last year, their conclusion is that real time bidding won’t happen on Tv.  I disagree.  Once you can do real time bidding you’ll want to, to maximize the return.  There will be some nuances (i.e. tv shows advertising currently being booked out in advance) but over time brands will want to bid up certain times.

2) Advertising is going to flex in terms of time
I think ads will get shorter, more 6 second ads, more 15 second ads.  But then they’ll also get longer.  How? Well you’ll have the choice to find out more – which may take you on a journey that lasts 10-15 minutes.  I.e. imagine how you watch a streaming show, then click on an ad link go away explore that then come back.  This will come back to the tv.

3) Tv viewing will be on our terms
But there will also remain this idea of getting around the tv for a live event.  Why? Brands will capitalize on the monopoly of a time/place and want exclusiveness on that.  House of Cards – yes you can watch it all at once but you can only watch it when they first launch it – they still control that release.

4) More and more behind the scenes
The same way as the internet feeds those that seek more information – tv shows will have more behind the scenes; interviews, live tweets from the crew.  Fans will be able to get richer & deeper relationships with the shows they love.

5) Scripted vs reality?
I think these trends will continue but as before you will get greater involvement and ability to participate in the tv shows.

6) Responsive tv formats
The same way the web has developed a responsive theme for handling websites across different viewing screens, technology methodologies will evolve so you can do this much easier and be aware at the production end how it’s going to work in the different formats.  When shooting for mobile you don’t get the same impact with the ratios you use for tv.

7) Digital will be in the content
I think rather than overlays, digital ads will be like regular ad breaks, in the content itself.  Product placement will continue its growth.  But I think overlays just interfere with the experience and richness of content.

8) Tv is a verb
Tv is becoming a verb really – for leaning back and enjoy a show.  Not lean forward on your laptop.  Tv is sitting down relaxing and consuming entertainment (whether it’s on your tablet, phone or laptop) but it’s that different mode of consuming content.  Content that is lean forward will have different rules apply.

What’s not gonna happen?
This is super subjective but here’s a few things discussed that I don’t think will happen and why.

On Screen Commerce
There’s a lot of discussion of on screen commerce – buy what you see.  I don’t see that flying, as media production in general try to use ambiguous or unbranded goods (other than product placement) to maintain focus on the story.  And product placement generally don’t want to advertise the fact they’ve paid to be in there.

Ad Overlays
I don’t think anyone wants to have ads overlay their Game of Thrones.

A true pay for no ads
Ads pay for 75% of tv costs and cover around 70% of the satellite costs to deliver content to you.  I just don’t see consumers willing to make up all of that gap when it can be subsidised by ads.  We even see Hulu doing this.  We will see more crowd funded intiatives though which I think will be the exclusion to the rule (see: Veronica Mars on KickStarter).

—

And that’s it.

Interesting food for thought, the future of tv, how it will change and what actually won’t change.  The biggest undercurrent in my mind is (and like any major societal change) that it will be as the next generation become decision makers in the production of tv – they’ll bring through the big change.