September 1 rolled around and the news broke that TechStars was coming to NYC.  ”eh? eh?” Benny prodded.

We decided to apply to both TechStars and Y Combinator. We were able to score an interview with Y Combinator and threw together a rough Friendslist prototype to demonstrate messaging and basic functionality.  Then we did a ridiculous thing…

We flew across the entire country for a 10 minute meeting.

The barrage of questions began as soon as we sat down. “So you’re building a build your own marketplace.  Who is this for?” asked Paul Graham. Benny explained that it’s designed for connectors.  ”What makes you think anyone will want to use this?” shot back Paul.

Our YC alum friends had given us lots of advice and warnings: “Just hold on as best you can.  Stop the train from getting entirely derailed.”

It was an impossible task. In a room with six people (Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Paul Buchheit, Robert Morris, Trevor Blackwell, and Harjeet Taggar), there seemed to be at least ten lines of thought. Our pitch quickly got derailed around email. “Why can’t you just use an email mailing list to do this?” Benny replied “well you can’t browse it in an easy way”  ”Of course you can.”

Finally Paul Graham, who seemed utterly confused asked bluntly “Where did this idea come from!?”  I offered my personal  anecdote:  “A LOT of people come to me looking for stuff — jobs, apartments, etc.  I wanted a place to put this.  I started Wegslist.”

Paul finally got it!  ”Ohhhhh, you’re one of these connectors.”  And then the meeting slipped back into confusion and objections. Paul Buchheit didn’t understand why it’s better than email.  Trevor didn’t understand why it’s better than a Google group.  Harj was concerned about how we would get liquidity in the marketplace.

Paul pushed us to consider whether a the Hacker News community (or a Porsche website) could use this to power a classifieds site.  We gave in a bit and said “We’re not committed to centering this around a person, but it’s going to be our first approach.  I think there are a few different ways this can go: 1) It becomes a craigslist competitor at scale 2) it becomes best of class platform (like stackoverflow) that you license to people or companies 3) We pick a vertical and kill it — jobs, apts, or roommmates

Finally Paul asked “Benny, you work at Gilt Groupe.  Why not do something in the daily deal space?” “That space doesn’t interest me that much.”

Paul followed up: “What’s your guys’ expertise?” Me: “Mobile. [long pause] I’m not going to sit here and tell you there’s some trajectory between exit strategy and this project. But this is something we’re passionate about and want to try.”

The group gathered around our laptop to look at the rough Friendslist prototype “That guy look like he’s about to be attacked by a mob surrounding him.” “That’s a really scary logo!” “You guys aren’t graphic designers, but that’s exactly the right messaging.”  The timer went off and the 10 minutes was up.  We filed out of the room speechless.

Benny was the first to break the silence.
“I thought that went pretty well.”

“Are you kidding? We just got crucified”

[continue to the next chapter]

Possibly Related Posts:

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• Idea, team, or network?
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As you may know, Benny and I have killed off Friendslist and refocused our efforts elsewhere.  The Friendslist product was live for about 6 months.  In that time we disproved our core hypothesis: that we can compel people to build and run their own thriving marketplace.

Few people used the product. Even fewer loved it. And Benny and I thrive when making things people love.

The idea: In the same way that the original Craigslist had a trusted person at the center (Craig Newmark), our product empowered people to build and run their own private marketplace where their friends could trade apartments, jobs, employees etc.  The product promised to help “connector type” people solve their friends’ needs and make them more helpful.

Let’s start at the beginning: July 2010. I was trying to help a friend find an apartment and I turned to the legendary Nick Gray for help.  Nick pointed me to something called Janelle’s list. “It’s like a smaller version of craigslist — my friend Janelle runs it” he said.

Janelle’s list is amazing — it’s a 2000 person private facebook group that is “craigslist without the creeps, linkedin without the lame.” Everyone in the group is a friend or friend-of-friend of Janelle and it’s one of the best places to find an apartment, roommate, or upload your resume for hire.  The community is awesomely active and the listings are all 100% genuine and scam-free.  Discovering Janelle’s list felt like I had discovered a little hidden island of awesomeness: a private product with high user engagement.

The group was started by Janelle Gunther, a popular Williamburg socialite, and inspired by Lawrence Lewitinn‘s “Lawrence’s List.”  People have successfully used these lists for apartments, roommates, job searches, employee searches, selling products and dozens of other use cases.

Both groups started the same way — Lawrence and Janelle were overwhelmed by the number of inbound emails from friends looking for things.  They wanted to be helpful and their lists were a way of letting their friends connect while eliminating their exhausting roles as middleman matchmaker.

This was a pain point I personally felt. The more I researched, the more similar products I found: Barney Pell (Powerset/Microsoft) runs something called BarneyJobs – a yahoo group that helps connect people to jobs. Mollie Chen (birchbox) runs a summer mailing list to help connect her friends to each other.  There’s even a private community marketplace site called Quentin’s Friends run by, you guessed it, Quentin.

All of these products had one thing in common.  They were hacks.

BarneyJobs is a Yahoo group. Janelle’s list is a Facebook group.  The wall posts are being used as a classifieds board…a Facebook group isn’t supposed to be a marketplace!  Entrepreneurs are trained to look for hacks: makeshift solutions to pain points.  Hacks represent an opportunity to build a killer product.

Friendslist would be that killer product. We would be the platform to enable people to build their own craigslists, fitting that use case like a glove. And we’d lower the barrier thereby turning an early adopter action into a mainstream action.

Janelle’s list was the first time I had ever seen anything rival Craigslist. All we had to do was replicate that action a few thousand times. Our big vision was that if we could build a bunch of small Craigslists on a unified platform, we could eventually combine these to get to massive scale and be THE Craigslist killer. We believed we had a unique approach to building market liquidity: tapping superconnectors who would want to run their own craigslists.

Friendlist was going to be BIG!!!  And the thought of someone playing ‘craig’ fit into my personal wheelhouse of quirky, slightly absurdist products that are pressworthy. I could see the headlines already:  ’The story of FriendsList: how Jim’s list, Jane’s list, and Jon’s list beat Craigslist!’

The prototype

The first step was a prototype — a simple Facebook group called Wegslist.  People GOT it and instantly it filled with postings.  Over the next few days, the users of Wegslist basically invented the service themselves.  Jesse Middleton wrote:

As I thought about this idea the other day, it really resonated with me. I’m not sure if you’re on to something but it would be worth exploring some manner of allowing people to replicate this easily — jmiddleton.wegslist.com for example — and then offering a bit more categorization. I love the idea of building it on top of Facebook as the connections are already there.

And Peter Dixon-Moses wrote

So I like the idea of having personalized wegslist pages. Draw a parallel between the model for real-estate (typically rentals) from a big outfit like Corcoran where every realtor has their own listings page. And even though listings may be duplicated, each realtor can present the opportunity in their own words (for their particular audience).

At that point I was 100% sold on pursuing this product:

1) I had identified an early adopter hack — people building their own marketplace and playing Craig.
2) The members and owners of these marketplaces are normals (read: not early adopter tech community geeks) which means mass adoption is possible.
3) Using a Facebook group as a prototype, I confirmed that this messaging works and my friends are using the product.

Everything should be smooth sailing from here on, right?

Continued on part 2…

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Possibly Related Posts:

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“I’d like to start a company” he said.
“Cool!  Have any good ideas?”
“That’s the most important thing?!”

I was taken aback — partially at the abruptness of his question, partially because he followed up my question with a question, and partially because, well, he made a really good point.

I paused for a bit.

“Well, the idea isn’t the most important, no.  The team is the most important. Actually, no, your network is the most important.  Wait, no, the idea…”

Idea. Team. Network. Idea. Team. Network. Idea. Team. Network.

A triangle appeared in my mind and I was racing around the edges.  ”They’re all interconnected” I finally blurted out.

Most people think sales and biz-dev when they hear network.  But it’s broader than that…your network is all the people you interact with — whether it be through a school, an accelerator program, a coworking space, or just the dudes you play poker with on Fridays.  Your network is your input, determining your exposure to ideas, products, trends, and stupid youtube videos.  Your conversations with these people will shape your thinking which will lead to good ideas…

…and good ideas are absolutely necessary to succeed.  Good ideas are magnetic (just check out kickstarter and its virality…) and will generate momentum and a strong network of people that embrace you.  Ideas can take many forms — blog posts, products, businesses, events — and a good idea will compels others to want to see it become a reality which helps to solidify a team…

and a team of smart people will generate good ideas.  And your team will both build and derive from your network:  a strong team attracts a strong network of other smart people who hang around.  And people in your network will become part of your team as you’ll end up working with friends and friends-of-friends.

Ultimately investors will invest in your team, but only because it generates good ideas and a strong network which can get stuff done.

And now my head hurts.

Possibly Related Posts:

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• FriendsList is dead (but we’re very much alive!)
• DoubleDub: A Dream Come True
• Golden Skyscrapers and Minimal Viable Products
• Location, Location, Location: The Hyperlocal ‘Moment’ of Awe

If this were a movie, I’d tell you about the day I first met Benny…how we randomly struck up a conversation about technology…how we immediately hit it off and became close friends…and how I remember the moment like it was yesterday. But to be honest I was sound asleep that morning when Benny and his family barged into our freshman dorm room at Columbia and started rearranging the furniture. I have a vague recollection of sitting up in bed and introducing myself, but mostly I recall the pounding headache after a night of partying.

Anyway, by some miracle I was blessed to have Benny assigned as a college roommate. The rest, as they say, is history.

So what’s so special about this guy?  In short, Benny is one of the most impressive people I know. They say that 10 good developers = 1 great developer. Benny is a great developer. When he writes code, he frickin’ flies. He’s also two skill sets in one. Perhaps you remember the hybrid “Hacker / Software Engineer” I described in the Three Types of ‘Computer’ People: “These talented folk will be able to rapidly hack together your prototype, then architect and build the real version, and then build and lead a technology team. They’ll write both quick-and-dirty code and well-written code — and they’ll perfectly balance progress and perfection.  If you find one of these, grab hold and don’t ever let go.”

I was describing Benny when I wrote that.

But Benny is much more than just a talented coder. He’s an amazing person too. He’s one of the kindest and most generous people I know.He cares an extraordinary amount about his family and close friends and he’s always there when needed. He’s incredibly level-headed and rational and diplomatic about handling disagreements. He has a great sense of humor and is a blast to hang out with. And he’s seriously easy to get along with.

In our seven years of friendship, we’ve only had a single fight. It centered around a prank involving a laptop, Butler library, VNC remote control software, gay porn, and Benny not speaking to me for three weeks. Buy me a beer sometime and I’ll tell you the story. (Buy me two beers and I’ll tell the story of how “Benny Wong” got mysteriously changed to “Benny’s Wrong” on his thesis)

Benny also has a great eye for visual design and an amazing sense of product design and user experience. He was the sole developer on the Gilt City founding team (part of Gilt Groupe) where he carried the product from zero to public launch.  Gilt City has since experienced explosive growth and moved into their own offices.

In the process, Benny learned how to lead and manage a technology team. That means he’s not just the perfect partner for building a product — he’s the perfect partner for building a company.  And he’s the perfect friend to share the crazy journey ahead.

Bdotdub, I couldn’t be more excited to work with you. We’re gonna rock this.

-Jdotdub

Possibly Related Posts:

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As they laid out the extensive feature set they envisioned and the millions of dollars in venture capital they were hoping to raise to build this product, I was struck by an interesting realization: the concept of a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is actually quite counterintuitive. Don’t you want your product to be as awesome as possible? Features are good, so how could fewer be better?

Manhattan is full of gorgeous skyscrapers. No self-respecting person walks around thinking to themselves “Gosh, if I were going to build a skyscraper, I’d want mine to look like shit.” That just doesn’t happen! Instead, we have a natural tendency to want to ‘one up’ the status quo: “I’m going to build a skyscraper out of gold!”

But in software, version 1.0 of your product should look like shit! Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn famously said: “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

The heart of the issue is that very few of these minimal viable products exist in the real world. Why? They rarely stick around! Customer feedback quickly drives additional improvements and features. Soon, memories of the mediocre original product completely fade away!  How many of us realize that the original iPhone didn’t have apps?! It wasn’t until July 2008, an entire year after the iPhone debuted, that the app store launched.  But today we only see the final product.

In a world of beautiful skyscrapers and impressive technologies, thinking small seems futile. But in this economic environment, a minimal viable product is more than just a nice concept. It’s a requirement.

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…staring at my iPhone, the city right outside the window suddenly had voice, personality, opinion. Notes started pouring in, bite-size songs of praise about people and places…”

Minh Uong/The New York Times

I love it! What a perfect description of that magical moment many of us have experienced — when you suddenly ‘get’ hyperlocal and realize that these nerdy webpages and mobile apps can literally change the way you interact with your own neighborhood, transforming the cement jungle into a friendly playground ripe for exploration.  The author elaborates on the feeling:

“…crack doors open that might otherwise be passed by, giving personality and accessibility to the surrounding blocks. To walk through the city eyeing your Foursquare tips is to realize just how little of it you ordinarily see.”

My moment of awe came during a visit to San Francisco in 2007. With my WAP enabled phone in hand, I walked down the street googling the names of every restaurant I passed — my obsessive-compulsive way of picking a good one.  A website called Yelp.com consistently popped up at the top of the google searches, and although I had never heard of it, I found their information and reviews extremely valuable.  I suddenly realized the power of this technology: I could get more insight about a restaurant by Googling it than stepping foot inside.

Back in New York, I graduated college and waved goodbye to Morningside Heights and moved into to a completely new neighborhood:  Hells Kitchen.  Again, I suddenly I found myself overwhelmed with choice!  I distinctly remember running cost-calculations in my head: “How much it would cost to try out every single restaurant on 9th Avenue?”  The answer?  Too much.

And here’s where Yelp really shined.  Yelp was my insider guide for my new neighborhood.   I could literally zoom into a city-block and see every single business on the block listed — alongside details, reviews, and tips.  Suddenly I had a way to learn about those ‘off the beaten track’ spots. Empire Tea and Coffee?  If it weren’t for Yelp, I’d have overlooked one of the best coffee places in the city.

Why are hyperlocal services so powerful?  Because there’s a high personal relevancy to the information they offer.   Steven Berlin Johnson (author and co-founder of outside.in) sums it up well:

Say you’ve got a particularly nasty pothole on your street that you’ve been scraping the undercarriage of your car against for a year. When the town or city finally decides to fix the pothole, that event is genuinely news in your world.

It’s news in your world and only your world!  By the way, If you’re not already getting a daily everyblock.com newsletter, you should sign up.  The information you’ll learn is incredible.

Perhaps what’s most exciting is that existing news sites and reviews guides are just scratching the surface of what’s possible with hyperlocal information.  Friend-finders like Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt are finally starting to take off. But cool startups are working on defining whole new hyperlocal categories too: Deals, Nightlife, and even Casual Encounters!

In the deals category for example, Spotter by Yipit uses the foursquare API to find deals at the places you visit!  The result is an incredible daily deal newsletter that’s custom-tailored to where you live, work, and hang out. In a different category, Buzzd and Citysense are trying to track nightlife activity and tell you what’s ‘hot’ around you.  And let’s not forget Grindr, an iPhone app which facilitate sexual encounters between gay men.  The service has over 500,000 users and on a given day 30% log on.  Incredible traction.

Hyperlocal has finally come of age.  And seeing it go mainstream is going to be really fun.

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Embrace Google Maps/Transit

Google transit gives point-to-point directions using public transportation for over 400 cities.  The service especially shines on a mobile device.  Google maps on my iPhone was an indispensable part of navigating the city, helping me figure out exactly where and when to catch the buses.  I’m amazed by the number of people who don’t know their iPhone (and Android and some Blackberry phones) can do point-to-point train/subway/bus directions while incorporating the schedules too!

Get a Bike

Public transportation is great, but renting/borrowing a bike is a must.  Yes, it takes cajones to hop on and conquer the streets of a foreign city, but biking is without a doubt the best way to learn a new city.  You’ll cover much more ground than walking and avoid the headache of parking a car or waiting for public transportation.  Basically, you’ll get more done with your limited time.  And since bikes have zero variable cost, they strongly encourage exploration.  So go get lost on a bike! (but bring along your phone with Google Maps of course)

Connect with the Local Community

A few days before embarking, I asked the Austin Yelp community for suggestions of places to see and things to do.  “NYC Eliter Comin’ to Austin” garnered over 70 super helpful tips like: “6:30pm tuesday is the start of hippy hour at the continental club with the lovely miss toni price.”  Several of Austin’s fantastic Yelp members even sent me personal notes welcoming to the city.  If you weren’t already aware, I’m a big fan of Yelp and find it far and away the best source of hyperlocal information.

See the Heart of a Neighborhood

So you’ve picked a neighborhood to explore.  Great, but where exactly should you start?  Use Yelp to figure out the main commercial streets in a neighborhood!  From the homepage just click ‘search’ (leave the search box blank).  Then filter the list by “Most Reviewed” and maneuver the interactive map around your destination neighborhood.  Red pins will help call out the main streets!  Around the UT Austin campus, Guadalupe Street stood out as the clear winner (see picture on left).  This feature also works really well from Yelp’s fantastic iPhone app.

Find Must-See Popular Hotspots

Again, click ‘search’ on Yelp.com and leave the search box blank.  Setup the filters to sort by “Most Reviewed.”  This will show all Yelp listings in that city ranked by popularity.  For Austin, that includes Home Slice, Uchi, Guero’s, Polvo’s, and the flagship Whole Foods Market store.  In NYC, this list features Shake Shack, Magnolia Bakery, Ippudo, Pommes Frites, Katz’s Delicatessen, Grimaldi’s, Lombardi’s, and the Chicken & Rice Halal Cart at 53rd/6th.  You could certainly do worse as a tourist…

Find Weird Local Stuff

Most people know Yelp for its restaurant and bar listings.  But their ‘Local Flavor’ category has some seriously cool stuff.  Austin’s Local Flavor included the Cathedral of Junk, a massive three story structure created from decades of junk.  And my insider knowledge of the Bats Under the Congress Avenue Bridge seriously impressed the locals.  In San Francisco, this category led me to the Clarion Alley Murals and also the Seward Street Slides which turned out to be tremendously fun.

Bookmark Now, Retrieve Later

Bookmark places on Yelp.com that look interesting (you’ll need a yelp.com account to do so).  Then, from the Yelp iPhone App you can view those bookmarks on the go.  Best of all, the app shows your bookmarks ranked by proximity to your current location!  This is phenomenally helpful.

Log your Trip and Get Local Recommendations

I checked in on Foursquare at every place I went, despite having no Austin friends using the service.  Why?  Because afterwards I can view a minute by minute log of my trip on the history section of the Foursquare website! Equally cool, foursquare provided me great local recommendations.  Checking in at a random grocery prompted “Go to Green Mesquite and eat BBQ with friends!”  The tip was left by fellow NYC Foursquare user and friend Lee Semel and Green Mesquite was right down the block.  His trip to Austin occurred eight months prior but the virtual breadcrumbs remained!

Keep the Community Involved

Each night I updated the Yelp Forum with my accomplishments.  I also laid out my plan for the following day.  This united the Yelp community around my adventures and was really fun.  “You’re doing more things than most Austinites do in a year” wrote one Yelper. Seeing my plans even spurred Riki M., a former Brooklynite herself, to join me at the Cathedral of Junk.  The kindness of a tight-knit online community like Yelp is amazing.  Riki brought with her the Austin essentials: beer and bug spray.  And our mini picnic was fantastic — albeit buggy.

More Tips?

Since my trip, I’ve discovered plancast, which may prove very useful.  Readers: are there other tech tools I should be taking advantage of? Leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments.  Thanks!

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 2]
• FriendsList is dead (but we’re very much alive!)
• Idea, team, or network?
• DoubleDub: A Dream Come True
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The most basic principle of business is that profit is revenue minus costs.  Try considering all fixed costs as a rate — especially a daily or hourly rate — and then look around you.  You’ll find you have more insight into existing businesses or the potential of new ventures to succeed. 

And you’ll find that some business ideas simply don’t make sense.

Don’t plan on building a business by selling a product for $2 that takes an hour of time to produce unless you’re superhuman and don’t need sleep.

Don’t franchise a mobile RV arcade for “between $89,000 and $200,000″ a year which can fetch “$300 to $350 for a two-hour party appearance” without carefully considering the math — that you’ll need to book somewhere between 250 to 650 clients just to break even on your initial upfront investment.  I don’t know too many kids who have birthday parties on Monday nights..and there’s only so many hours in a weekend and only 52 weekends in a year.  You’re might be paying off these costs for eternity…and the high tech games will certainly have become stale by then.

And please don’t build an SMS mobile coupon company on an assumption that you’ll get a salesperson to hit up every local business selling your $10 service (so cheap that nobody will say no!).  As mentioned in my article about SMS coupons, an entry level salesperson earning $50,000 a year is a cost of $1000 a week or $200 a day or $25 an hour.  Make sure a sales person would earn more than they would cost.  If the numbers don’t work, your business won’t work.

But wait!  It’s not all gloom and doom. Thinking in terms of daily sales can actually be really inspiring for a first time entrepreneur:

If you’re quitting a job to start your own company, consider what it will take in daily earnings to replace your salary.  Better yet, consider how much you honestly need to be ramen profitable.

Most recent college graduates in NYC working a full time job are probably earning somewhere between $35,000 – $80,000 depending on industry and skill set.  Consider that $100/day for 365 days is $36,500 annually.  This is a livable wage for most scrappy 20-somethings (assuming you don’t have a family to support and you’re not drowning in school debt).  Consider that $200/day is a rather comfortable annual salary of $73,000.  (And yes, these numbers are based on working 7 days a week.  And they don’t take into account the unpaid time you’ll put into an initial product launch.)

If you need inspiration to get started, never forget just how ‘small’ a start can be: just get to $100 a day.  Consider it milestone number one for your first entrepreneurial venture.  Let’s say you have a product idea that you think would sell for $20 with a 50% margin.  Ask yourself: “Can I sell 10 per day?”  Consider that again: 10 per day.  Consider that there’s six billion people in the world,  is it really so hard to find 10 customers each day?  Or if you’re working with a partner, 20 customers?

So consider David Heinemeier Hansson’s amazing advice (that I have echoed above) and stop thinking about your next billion dollar startup.  I believe first time entrepreneurs (of which I am one myself) should start small.  Go for the lowest bar of success: the $100/day idea.  Once you’ve conquered that, go for the $100,000 idea, then the million dollar idea, then the billion dollar idea.  Along the way you’ll meet fantastic people, gain skills and confidence, and maybe even have some fun.

Now if only my 2c could be put towards rent…

Possibly Related Posts:

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• FriendsList is dead (but we’re very much alive!)
• AirBnB hosts = UX designers
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Apple’s app store taught me that living in New York City is expensive.  How expensive? $1.25 an hour.

Consider that the rent for my (rather modest) Brooklyn apartment is roughly $900 a month including utilities.  There are roughly 30 days in each month, so $900 / 30 days means I’m paying $30 a day and $30 spread across 24 hours in each day means I pay $1.25 an hour.  Ouch.  Suddenly $2.25 per subway ride doesn’t seem all that bad…

Most people I tell about Exit Strategy NYC ask “How much did it sell?”  They phrase the question in past tense.  This is fine for fad-like novelty apps.  But for utility apps like Exit Strategy NYC the question is best phrased in the present tense: “How much does your app sell?” (Marco Arment refers to these types as two different app stores).  Selling apps in the app store is an on-going business.

Apple’s app store has changed the way I look at the world. iPhone app sales figures are available each morning for the prior day.  As a result, I’ve gotten in the habit of checking app sales first thing each day.  But more importantly, I now view the world around me differently: it’s all about rates.

In the manufacturing world, the question is whether a product can be sold at a price and volume high enough to cover production costs.  But many businesses sell products which are almost pure profit.  I’m not just talking about software or service businesses.  Consider your local coffee shop, bar, or video rental shop.  The items they sell are almost entirely profit.  In these cases, the more useful question to ask is can they sell *fast enough*?

The phrase ‘Burn Rate’ is typically applied to pre-revenue startups calculating how long the business can survive (ie their ‘runway’).  But the concept is applicable to all businesses and individuals: Is money coming in faster than it’s draining?  Simply put, is the bathtub filling? Or draining? (the photo is a metaphor by the way…not a picture of my $1.25/hour apartment)

Is that cool new coffee shop in your neighborhood going to succeed?  Consider all the costs as rates.  If their rent is approximately $3000 a month, that’s $100/day.  If they have two full time employees, tack on another $100/day for each.  The owner should make at least $100/day to make the business worth running. So that’s an on-going cost of $400/day.

If the main product being sold is a $2 cup of tea, unless 200 people pass through the doors each day, don’t count on that business staying around too long.

Let’s break that down further.  If the shop is open 10 hours each day, that’s 20 customers an hour.  Or one purchase every three minutes. They better start upselling those croissants real fast..

There are a number of businesses in my neighborhood (specifically places on Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill) that I’m afraid won’t exist much longer.  Consider the perpetually empty video store.  If rentals are $4 and it’s a one man business, he’s going to have to cover $200/day to stay afloat assuming he’s willing to work 7 days/week.  Is he doing 50 video rentals a day? It certainly doesn’t look like it.

Businesses aren’t the only thing that should be analyzed this way.  Break anything down into a micro-rate and it really makes you think about ‘value’. I pay roughly $90/month for my AT&T iPhone service, which comes to $3 a day.  Do I get more than $3 of value and enjoyment out of my iPhone each day?  Absolutely. Similarly, my gym costs about $75 each month.  Does considering my gym subscription as a $2.50 daily expense motivate me to get my money’s worth (almost) every day?  Absolutely.

[Continue to part 2]

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But what happens when these tasks require some modicum of creativity too?  Things get interesting. Encouraged by Amazon’s “content creation” use case (see image on right), I decided to see if I couldn’t outsource copy writing.

Here’s the task I submitted:

I’m feeling sad.  Won’t you give me a compliment?

Please give me a compliment. Be original, please. The funnier the better. Timely compliments (relating to obama, layoffs, bailouts, madoff etc) are especially appreciated.  Slightly raunchy compliments are great too.

Specifically, I wanted 50 witty compliments delivered, and I offered users 10 cents per compliment.  Amazon charged me 50 cents too, so the total cost of the experiment was $5.50  Here were my favorites:

• I really like the fact that you aren’t the surgeon who implanted eight embryos into a mother of six children.
• Do you take karate? because your body’s kicking!
• Your looking better than the economic forcast for the next decade!
• If I told you that you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?
• Are you a parking ticket? Cos you got fine written all over.
• Do you have a map? I just keep on getting lost in your eyes.
• You have abs like Obama.
• I love how you always keep your word, example, when you said you would pull out, you did.  Quite different from my last man, Bush.
• You are the smartest, funniest, best looking, most all-around great guy that I have never met.  All guys want to be you and all women want to date you.  And if none of that helps, try getting drunk.  Best of luck to you.

Also unexpected was that my full name would be publicly listed next to my task.  Several of the submissions addressed me by name, or commented on my name:

• Jonathan,  I enjoy how your first and last name both have equal number of syllables and vowels.  Very balanced.  Good job sir.
• Your surname is so very smoothy and sexy-sounding, sibilant and sultry. It makes me think of wagons, wagon trains, and governors.
• You’re such a sweetheart, Jonathan. Best of luck to you.

And many of the compliments I got were directly related to Amazon Turk itself, often commenting on the free money I was giving away.

• I’m not exactly sure what to say to that but, you could just give me the $0.10 because I’m a cool person…haha.  And believe me, in today’s economy, I could use every penny I could get.  Anyway, have a good day. 
• You are very nice to be creating this HIT.
• Cheer up, dude!  You’re a Requester here, not a turker, heck I’m making big plans for the ten cents this HIT pays, so you have bettered somebody’s day, and that’s a good thing, right?  Obama is president, so your life will improve soon. You’re having a good hair day, right? Sorry, it’s hard to compliment someone online, and I am NOT saying anything raunchy.
• In times like these, who can be better than a guy helping the normal folk with a bailout?

Some compliments were just plain creepy…

• Johny boy you are the center of my world and while the economy sinks deeper and deeper my heart grows and my loins tingle thinking of you.

Others were creative but a little off-kilter:

• Jon, if I had to describe you, I would say you are the Canada of the world, stable, slightly annoying, but in the end the one who does lose their shirt in this poker match we call a world economy…mostly because nobody invited you to the game.
• The stock markets are plunging like never before; i believe that they’ll soon reach zero and then restart the counter! ! !

And many assumed that my sadness resulted from layoffs:

• You are too good for that job anyway!
• You are so good-looking and brilliant that even if you are layed off, another company will snap you up within days!  You are so desirable, you will have too many offers to pick from!  Everybody wants you!!!!!
• My, dont be upset, Recession is a cycle of ups and down, good times will soon come. Infact faster then you think as Obama has come with knowledge.   And Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
• Hey cheer up! Some of that bailout pork money is designated for sad people. Just go to city hall and frown.

Some weren’t really compliments but instead jokes:

• Police arrested two kids yesterday. One was drinking battery acid and the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off!  HAHAHA hilarious!

And some rather lengthy jokes too:

A group of frogs were traveling through the woods, and two of them fell into a deep pit. All the other frogs gathered around the pit. When they saw how deep the pit was, they told the unfortunate frogs they would never get out.

The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jump up out of the pit. The other frogs kept telling them to stop, they were as good as dead. Finally, one of the frogs took heed to what the frogs were saying and simply gave up. He fell down and died.

The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and suffering and just die.

He started to jump even harder and finally made it out. But when he got out, the other frogs asked him, “Why did you continue jumping? Didn’t you hear us telling you to quit.” The frog explained to them that he was deaf.

He thought they were Encouraging him the entire time.

And one was strangely rhymed poetry:

Obama in the White House,
Madoff headed to the Big House.
Jonathan, he can’t grouse,
No foreclosure on his house.

He didn’t get the layoff,
Didn’t take no payoff,
Didn’t lose his cash to Madoff,
Jonathan, to you my hat is off!

Were my expectations met?

The results as a whole weren’t as good as I had hoped for — I’ve only shared the interesting compliments here.  Many of the compliments were in broken English ( You’re so smart and good with money. Not many people have such a good head as you.), extremely mundane (You are the greatest) or attempted to weave in current events in a way that didn’t work (Your looking great today and at least your ears aren’t looking like obamas.)

I had hoped that the task would only be accepted by those who already had a brilliant compliment ready at the tip of their tongue, similar to how the Citi logo (with the red arc over ‘citi’ forming an umbrella) was done in 10 seconds (I strongly recommend watching the video — fast-forward to the halfway point).  I had hoped that the majority of uninspired users without a ready compliment  would pass over the task, essentially cherry-picking only users with the wittiest compliments.  But the average Turker spent 88 seconds on my task (a $4.09 hourly rate)…Oh well, just goes to show how dedicated Turkers are to solving the task in front of them!  Curious who these people are?  See the faces of mechanical turk.

Readers — would love to hear your thoughts on Amazon Mechanical Turk and other interesting experiments I could perform with the service.  Please leave comments… and compliments are obviously encouraged too!

Possibly Related Posts:

• The Friendslist Story [Chapter 2]
• FriendsList is dead (but we’re very much alive!)
• Idea, team, or network?
• DoubleDub: A Dream Come True
• Building a Broken Product