Scott Porad

An update from yesterday…

Seattle 2.0

I talked to Jennifer Cabala of Seattle 2.0 about some of my professional experience—how I got my start, on getting a successful product to market, and what I will be speaking on at Seattle 2.0’s event for technologists, Deploy 2010 on June 24th.   You can read the whole interview here.

SMASH Summit

I presented at the SMASH Summit on the keys to the success we’ve had at Cheezburger.  The slides of the presentation are below, and in summary the presentation goes like this:

• We have lots of sites
• Traffic is moving up and to the right
• There were three secrets to our success

1. Create great content — in particular, content that strikes and emotional chord
2. Create lots of it — more content means you’re more likely to resonate with someone
3. Create it for less money — the key to this is knowing what about your content people are coming for; in our case, it’s the captions, not the pictures.

Seattle Weekly

One of my passions is music, and I was interviewed by the Seattle Weekly for their weekly Reverb Questionnaire, a list of questions they pose to folks outside the music industry.  Previous participants include Michael Chabon, Michele Norris, and Janeane Garofolo, so I’m in pretty good company!

Yesterday I wrote about the Six Steps to Success with Everything and was reminded of one of the lessons I learned while raking the yard with my son.  In that post I wrote:

The lesson here was that when working on a project, you need to feel progress through small successes. Success feels good, so set yourself up to have lots of it, even if they’re small. When you’re having success, you’ll be having fun and want to keep on going. Success is a drug, it’s addictive, so organize your project to get the biggest high possible.

Coincidentally, as I was walking up my driveway last night I noticed that the pine cones are falling in my yard again.  I wonder what lesson they’ll teach us this year?

If I’ve said that once, I’ve said it a million times.  It is one of my mantras: success begets success.

1.  A little bit of success keeps me wanting more.

2.  A little bit of success motivates me to keep on going when times are tough.

3.  Planning for little bits of success is a tool that helps me break overwhelming jobs into manageable and achievable tasks.

4.  Breaking big jobs into little tasks helps me remember that it’s just a temporary setback, as opposed to the whole effort failing, when one thing doesn’t go well.

5.  It’s easier to start a big, overwhelming project when I break it up into little pieces and smaller tasks.  Then, I go back to step #1.

6.  Rinse, lather, repeat.

Following up on my assertion that red is not a color, I wanted to share with you the xkcd color survey.

Read the survey results, and take the survey to see how it works…it’s a fascinating experiment in understanding how the mind works.

One of the ways my worldview has changed over the last few years is a real, genuine internalization of the importance of personal relationships.

I used to think the world was a meritocracy and that the smartest people would have the most success.  But, I don’t think that’s true any more, as a result of two observations.

Job Seeking — as the economy tanked, and friends and acquaintances were looking for work, the value of a professional network became so obviously important.  Of course, this is cliché, but it’s also true.  Very smart people were looking for work while other complete knuckleheads had jobs.  In addition, I realized that that in order for the professional network to be effective it needed to be in place before it was needed.

Work Success — I used to think that if you got the best and smartest developers and designers in a room that you’d end up with the best product.  What I’ve learned over the past few years is that if these developers and designers don’t play nicely together, then that’s a counter-force to their intelligence.  These days, I would prefer a team of A- players who have solid relationships and work really well together over a team of A+ players who don’t.  (In either case, I would only choose to work with A players.)

These thoughts are why Kent Beck’s thoughts about “team vision and discipline over individuals and interactions” resonated with me last week.  I was reminded of them again by David Brooks’ New York Times column today.

Brooks discusses how life outcomes are influenced by different types of government and policy.  It turns out, not very much.  You can read the whole column for detail, but it boils to:

When you try to account for life outcome differences…you find yourself beyond narrow [government- and policy-influenced] economic incentives and in the murky world of social capital. What matters are historical experiences, cultural attitudes, child-rearing practices, family formation patterns, expectations about the future, work ethics and the quality of social bonds.

As a result, Brooks goes on to argue that our government policies need to strengthen social bonds, provide basic security (because lack of security destroys trust, thereby destroying social bonds), and strengthen relationships.

This point of view jibes with my own experience about professional outcomes—that social bonds, trust and relationships are a greater factor in determining job seeking or work success than pure intelligence.  That’s not to say intelligence isn’t important, but rather it’s the relationships that open doors, and the smarts and experience that empowers you to walk through them.

I’ve been reviewing a lot of resumes lately.  Why do developer candidates list all the technologies that they have ever read a blog post about?  Things like this on web and software developer resumes are very common:

.NET (all versions), C#, VB.NET, PHP, Python, Java, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, SQL, SQL Server, TSQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis, IIS, Apache, nginx, xUnit, nUnit, RhinoMocks, ninject, StructureMaps, NHibernate, SparkViewEngine, SVN, Git, MVC, ActiveRecord, O/R Mapping, IoC, JSON, BSON, XML, Web Services, Threading, Sockets, TCP, HTTP.

Last summer, when I hired a carpenter to complete the unfinished basement in our house I didn’t ask him to enumerate all the tools he knows how to use:

Hammer, screwdriver (flathead and phillips), drill (including bits), saw, wrenches (imperial and metric)…

Could you imagine trying to hire a carpenter based on this information?  What I need to know was if he could do things like build walls, install flooring, replace windows, repair siding, etc.

My question for you: how could or should candidates write their resumes to be more effective?

My friend Fred is a caterer.  An excellent caterer, as a matter of fact.  Once, after eating one of his profiteroles I didn’t eat another dessert for weeks because I knew that nothing would compare, that all others would disappoint.

I’m always encouraging Fred to raise his prices and tell customers who only want him to do small events that he’s booked on that day.  He thinks I’m nuts.

My point to Fred rests on the Power of the Velvet Rope Theory—that anytime you tell someone they can’t have something they want it even more.

I’ve developed this theory after years and years of going to clubs and live music shows.  Put up a velvet rope and it doesn’t matter what you put on the other side, people will want to get back there.  Seriously, a velvet rope and a bouncer saying, “sorry, VIPs only” and you’ve created insatiable demand.  Most of the time, the party on the other side isn’t even half as much fun, anyhow.

In our capitalistic, materialistic society, price is the ultimate velvet rope.  So, my point to Fred is raise your price and you’ll have customers knocking down your door.

All of this came to mind today after watching the latest Rocketboom installment on “Trashy Art” in New York City.  Some guy is selling packages of authentic New York City trash.  First, it was a low priced gag.  Then, a mid-priced souvenir.  And, finally, a high-price piece of art.

Again, it’s like the velvet rope…

• Why We Prefer Founding CEOs
  (tags: Startup)

Patrick McKenzie, creator of Bingo Card Creator, writes about how he was inspired by how Dropbox uses “two-sided incentives” to drive growth.

McKenzie’s inspiration comes from Drew Houston’s presentation at the Startup Lessons Learned Conference.  Houston explains how their customer referral program has been a huge success because it benefits for the referrer and referree.  Specifically, if you’re a Dropbox user and refer another customer then the person you refer will get a pay a lower price…and, as the referrer, you will get more services for the same price that you’re currently paying.

This is great…it makes “tell-a-friend” type features more palatable than because it everyone get value.  But, I’d argue that it’s lame for two reasons.

First, it’s still spamming your friends and social networks.  Sure, perhaps it’s not as bad as Viagra e-mail spam.  In theory, your friend has made the decision that you might be interested, and you trust your friend.  Still, it’s not Permission Marketing.

In addition, it doesn’t it doesn’t actually mirror real world behavior.  Here is my experience in the real world:

I want to sign up for a service like Dropbox—let’s call it Service X—and I want to get a discount.  So, I go around the office, or tweet, or post to Facebook, “Hey…does anybody have a discount code for Service X?”

So, how could someone like McKenzie harness the power of this behavior?  I’m not sure…perhaps when a user goes to sign up for a service there would be a way to “ask” your social network if anybody has a discount code.

For example, using social network APIs, it should be easy to determine if there are currently any existing Service X users who are in my social network.  From there, the system could send messages into my network asking my friends they would recommend the service.  If they do, then we both get a benefit.  In this model, I am giving permission to my friends to market to me.

Do you have any ideas for how we could improve dual-incentive tell-a-friend marketing?

Hiring is hard.

Actually, hiring isn’t hard.  Hiring the right people is hard.  Very hard.

The more time I spend in the professional world, the more I realize that the fit of the people on a team is really, really important.  Just as important, if not more important, than skills.

I am reminded of something Kent Beck said at the Startup Lessons Learned conference last week.  Kent was reviewing the Agile Manifesto, and suggesting updates.

Agile, the manifesto says, values, “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.  True, but Kent added that in the ten years since it was signed he’s come to value “team vision and discipline over individuals and interactions”.

I think both are true.  Good teammates value the people they work with and think carefully about how the team interacts, but (paraphrasing Kent) are also willing to optimize for the success of the company, and have the discipline to think about the whole team.

[Why am I thinking about this?  Because I'm trying to hire a good developer at Cheezburger.  We've been looking for about two months, but haven't found the right person yet.  Maybe it's you: here's the listing.]