tag:sahilio.com,2014:/feedSahil Jain2014-09-09T16:30:26-07:00Sahil Jainhttp://sahilio.comSvbtle.comtag:sahilio.com,2014:Post/prepare-for-apples-reintroduction-to-the-mobile-ad-world2014-09-09T16:30:26-07:002014-09-09T16:30:26-07:00Prepare for Apple's reintroduction to the Mobile Ad World<p>In typical Apple behavior, they have been sitting back and letting the world (read: other companies) do their R&D for them and it is the smartest move they continue to make. They’ve shown this with their hardware products and will soon prove this to be true with new mobile ad products.</p>
<p>What impresses me most with Apple is not their focus on design, their revitalization in the last decade or their existing dominance. It is their <strong>calculated patience</strong>. </p>
<p>It is no secret that Apple is rarely first to market. However, it’s important to note that they are not simply sitting back resting on the laurels of their existing successful businesses (iPhone, iPad, Macs, etc). </p>
<p>Time and time again, Apple enters a market roughly 3-5 years into the given market’s maturity. </p>
<p>They buy their courtside ticket and scout their competition, who inevitably light the clear path to the basket. </p>
<p>Certainly we can consider the <strong>Apple Watch</strong> process as a prime example of this. Wearables have been a hot topic for the last 3-4 years or so. They became more “mainstream” when companies like Jawbone, Fitbit, Pebble and Nike entered from a more practical angle of fitness/health tracking. However, it can be said that none of these companies have seen the wearable technology take off outside of buzzworthiness. During this time, Apple sat back, monitored the buzz, investigated the micro-winners/losers, took strategic board seats (Tim Cook being on the board of Nike) and let others spend their capital and time throwing things against the consumer-wall. </p>
<p><em>These companies became Apple’s extended R&D team.</em></p>
<p>Once manufacturing logistics, feature-set, demand, and path-to-dominance became clearer, Apple made it no secret that they’d be jumping in. </p>
<p><strong>This game-plan is in play right now while Apple sits back and watches companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google start to define successful ad units and monetization opportunities for mobile.</strong></p>
<p>In this case, Apple uncharacteristically launched their iAds product early, back in 2010. iAds in almost all senses <em>failed</em>. It simply replicated banner ads from the web and tried to force itself upon a unique mobile workflow.</p>
<p>Wait, did it <em>really</em> fail?</p>
<p>My bet is that Apple did this knowing their <em>perceived attempt</em> would be disappointing from a product standpoint, however, more importantly, it would be exactly the move to make the industry and competitors get involved in their mobile monetization R&D project. It attracted the competition, just how they planned it while they conducted an “Irish Exit”.</p>
<p><em>Like a moth to a flame…</em></p>
<p>Fast-forward a few years and we finally have “native” mobile ad types proving to be quite successful. The iAd banner ad era with companies like Millennial Media and Velti dying out gave birth to mobile monetization that actually works and fits the unique mobile use cases. Namely, Facebook’s mobile install and engagement ad types, which have arguably been the primary contributors to Facebook’s post-IPO success. Many have followed like Google, Twitter, Instagram and there are surely more to come.</p>
<p><strong>The biggest newcomer in mobile advertising will be Apple.</strong></p>
<p>And this time, when they do jump in, they are poised to catapult to the top of mobile ad revenue-generating companies. </p>
<p><strong>The moment Apple releases their own install or engagement ad types, we’ll see the most powerful player in mobile monetization become the ad player of choice in the mobile space.</strong> Not simply because of a successful ad type, but in addition, they’ll win due to having the <em>least-friction implementation</em> of this monetization method. <strong>Low-friction is Apple’s success factor</strong> and it will be the key to their victory in mobile advertising as well. </p>
<p><strong>The Apple SDK is already firmly embedded into the 1,300,000+ apps on the app store.</strong> With a simple flip of a switch, Apple will have the largest and most diversified native mobile ad network available with <strong>targeting inputs being gathered from TV, Computer, Phone, Tablet, and Human Body</strong> (sensors in Apple Watch).</p>
<p>While many, including Apple insiders, say they are just “not a software company,” I don’t buy it. <em>Neither should you.</em></p>
<p>This day will come and it will come soon. Once it does, it will be another <em>industry shifting product</em>, which is the only type of product that Apple is interested in launching. </p>
tag:sahilio.com,2014:Post/stop-starting-companies-just-to-start-a-company2012-12-20T03:48:00-08:002012-12-20T03:48:00-08:00Stop starting companies just to start a company. <p>It’s no surprise that from the outside, people see running a startup as a glamorous job of fame and riches. An infatuation for wanting to live a similar, contrived fantasy builds up in many and before you know it, they are dropping out of school, brainstorming the next big idea on their brand new whiteboard…</p>
<p>Wait a second…you’ve already set yourself up for failure. </p>
<p>What I’ve experienced over the last few years is that more and more folks are obsessed with starting a company without experiencing the true problem they are trying to solve and without setting their expectations appropriately to what starting and running a company really entails. How many times have you heard someone say, “man , I just came up with the best idea ever!” Yup, it must be a great idea and it must be the next billion dollar company, go for it!…</p>
<p>The courage and bravado is great but reason cannot be thrown out the door.</p>
<p>Truth is, the vast majority of ideas we come up are absolutely awful. If you’re truly an innovative thinker, you’ll have a thousand more in just few days - not to worry. With that said, these random ideas always seem like the next big thing when we are honeymooning with the initial concept. However, sitting around brainstorming an idea for a company or product is not how a company is created. You don’t brainstorm the next big idea. I’m not at all suggesting that one should stop coming up with ideas. It’s just important to have a system to filter those ideas so that you set yourself up for true success.</p>
<p>The best products and ideas come from experiencing a deep problem over and over again. Then, you start hearing multiple people around you asking for or wondering if a solution exists for that very problem. The latter is your cue to explore the idea, not drop everything and go for it. <strong>You can’t force an idea! It will show.</strong></p>
<p>Fundamentally, the most remarkable companies are created by people who are building a product to reconcile a problem they are solving for themselves. A problem they are intimately familiar with, having experienced it in all of its various permutations time and time again.</p>
<p>Finding the right idea to build a company around is something that just happens. Creating the company should not be your goal (which is what it is for many) but a tool to solve the problem you are experiencing. </p>
<p>The <em>right</em> problem is a problem that consumes you and legitimately keeps you up at night because you are so incredibly pissed off at how hard it is making your life. You start to notice it more and more. It isn’t just any problem…it’s the one that stands out among all of the other problems you encounter day to day.</p>
<p>Too many ‘entrepreneurs’ are infatuated with the idea of starting a company for the sake of starting a company, forcing them to brainstorm a new product or idea that they feel is ‘truly innovative and disruptive’ over the course of a few hours around a whiteboard. That’s just not going to work.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there are investors out there who will fund ‘whiteboard ideas’…instead, they need to look for and <strong>fund authenticity instead</strong>.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for more startups tearing it up and creating competition, diversity and talent in the ecosystem. But it has to happen naturally. Otherwise, we end up creating a <em>synthetic ecosystem</em> filled with hipster-founders, that is bound to collapse at some point. It can lead to even deeper issues like valuation hikes, unsophisticated investors, all of which hurt the longterm ecosystem. </p>
<p>This shift is concerning. An example that makes me nervous is Y Combinator’s new program where you can apply to YC without having an idea (<a href="http://ycombinator.com/noidea.html">http://ycombinator.com/noidea.html</a>). Wait…what? Isn’t the process of <strong>naturally</strong> experiencing a massive problem, validating it is a problem, exploring possible solutions all pieces of the puzzle that prove someone is perhaps ready to be a founder? I thought that was a necessary trial by fire. Granted, I don’t know much about that program, so maybe I am entirely wrong here. But I just can’t get myself to agree with the following quote about the program:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“A good startup idea is simply a significant, fixable unmet need, and most smart people are at least unconsciously aware of several of those. They just don’t know it. And we now have lots of practice helping founders see the startup ideas they already have.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Refinement of an idea is helpful (YC is great at helping with that) but I believe the problem the founder wants to solve needs to be evident in the founder - consuming the founder, felt in his/her bones & guts. Otherwise, it isn’t enough of an issue for the founder.</p>
<p>Everyone experiences problems - no secret there. So, you can have people help you identify and list them out and then think about which one might turn into a biz. However, to me, if you don’t <strong>know</strong> the problem you want to work on then I don’t think it is a big enough issue for you and not big enough that you should start a company around it. </p>
<p>I’m not entirely sure if this problem of creating companies for the sake of creating a company will self-regulate in a few years as the synthetic companies eventually fail. Or, do we need champions to actually push a change? Does it come from the investors being a bit more reclusive or just better and more readily available education around starting proper businesses? </p>
<p>I guess we’ll see.</p>
tag:sahilio.com,2014:Post/how-did-i-become-an-entrepreneur2012-12-13T23:50:00-08:002012-12-13T23:50:00-08:00How did I become an entrepreneur?<p>To learn how to become an entrepreneur I’d first have to ask myself why I want to be an entrepreneur. The answer to that now is the standard, traditional, not very exciting or unique response of: I want to build something that changes the world, have my own company with my own culture and challenge myself everyday. <em>Right</em>.</p>
<p>What’s odd is that I never once did ask myself “why do I want to become an entrepreneur?” Why not? Because I never wanted to be one, at least, never intentionally. It wasn’t my aspiration to be one, it wasn’t even a thought in my mind.</p>
<p>That’s what makes the story of how I got to where I am now and how I ended up an entrepreneur a bit more interesting…</p>
<p><strong>I’m an entrepreneur today out of trying to take shortcuts and a lack of identity.</strong></p>
<p>In high school I was an avid gamer (counter-strike 1.6). In fact, I was pretty good. That said, I wasn’t a professional eSports level guy and never got to travel to the cool tournaments or make money playing games. So what did I do? I went on mIRC, lied about my age and told some international multi-gaming organizations that they needed a head of US operations to take advantage of the US sponsors/market. This was my excuse to help the organizations while getting free rides to tournaments, events and being a part of the scene. I was 16 at the time and had no clue what ‘US operations’ even was. Didn’t matter, it worked (somehow)! A German multi-gaming organization picked me up and I went ahead with my plan. Not for the job really, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to become part of the scene through my skills in the game. This was my first opportunistic shortcut. </p>
<p>Next, I dropped out of high school at 17. No, not to start a company or be the next Silicon Valley whizz kid. So, why’d I do it? Well, I went to a private all guys Jesuit high school, Bellarmine, with amazing academics and even stronger sports. I transferred there after attending a public high school for my freshman year. At my public high school, I did quite well. I was in speech and debate, did really well at school and things were looking hot. At Bellarmine though, everyone was smart. Everyone kicked ass at a sport. I was thrown into the mix and had no clue how to stand out. While everyone was dominating their SATs, I was doing average. While everyone went to state championships, I was the soccer team manager due to bum knees from cross country and a lack of humility to just play JV. I was just another person in the mix. </p>
<p>So, when the summer after my junior year rolled around and I had a chance to be a black box QA tester for Yahoo! Mobile, I made the jump without even a flinch. Dropping out of high school is not <em>that</em> okay in society, but I was that determined to, just for the love of god, do something that would make me stand out. It was a severe lack of identity that had me not looking back for even a second. Keep in mind, black box QA was not a dream job or even a remote interest of mine. It was literally just something no one I knew had done before at my age. I think I was the only guy at Yahoo! that was kicked off a team (mobile search) for being underage during their release of adult content. </p>
<p>Now, I did get the opportunity to work on my own project to bring the pro gaming industry into Yahoo! as a content vertical through Yahoo! Mobile apps. But, I doubt they really took me seriously considering my pitch was 50 slides long and took an hour and a half to get through (thanks Ben Strong and Kyle Laughlin for not falling asleep!). </p>
<p>After a year and a half, it dawned on me that I needed to get out of QA or that would be my life…forever. My only option really was to get back into the swing of things at school as I didn’t have the credentials to take another serious position outside of QA. I also realized I had a lot of growing up to do and so I didn’t want to attend school for vocational training but really just to mature as an individual. </p>
<p>Fortunately, I got into UC Berkeley and studied Philosophy. Talk about being just another person in the herd….Berkeley was even worse for me than Bellarmine. I went from being a 4.2 student in high school to a straight B+ student in a school with 35,000+ students - many of whom kicked my ass academically. So, what did I do? I rebelled. Instead of attending class, I built a digital whiteboard social network on buddy press (Wordpress extension) in the world of dream theory. I worked at a magazine company helping them with SEO and building a mobile app as print publishing in ‘09 was desperate to get into digital. All the while sort of attending class. At this point, academics were going nowhere, so I was constantly on the prowl again for anything to get me back out in the world doing something that others around me weren’t. To regain my unique identity.</p>
<p>Then….the inevitable. I got a job offer and dropped out of Berkeley to join AOL at the end of my sophomore year at age 19. I was helping the team with buy vs build for mail and mobile, which was great. Though, 5 months in, I quickly realized I am not a big company guy (politics totally ruin the fun) and went on to co-found trigger.io for nearly 2 years. Just 6 months ago, I was granted the opportunity to finally be the founder and CEO of my own company, AdStage. </p>
<p>From AOL onwards, it was your typical story of wanting to have my own company, my own culture and wanting to change the world. Nothing wrong with that at all and I love it. </p>
<p>But, it’s important for me to remember how I really got here. It wasn’t my last 3 moves, but my first 3. It was my obsession with standing out due to a lack of self-confidence/esteem/identity that I just said “to hell with it” and ran with anything that could set me apart and make my story just a bit more unique. </p>
<p>So now, when I ask myself why I want to be an entrepreneur, the answer is simple - being an entrepreneur makes me <em>something</em>.</p>
tag:sahilio.com,2014:Post/remain-clueless2012-08-06T07:48:15-07:002012-08-06T07:48:15-07:00Remain Clueless<p>I have a huge issue with business reads, startup reads, success/failure reads, and reads that reflect what you should or should not do in a business or what is good or bad to do in a given situation. (reads = books, essays, blog posts, etc.)</p>
<p>Those reads genuinely scare me. Why? They often, even subconsciously, shift my trajectory, hamper my creativity, and in some cases, make me conform while robbing me of unimaginable experiences. </p>
<p>I had a colleague once that loved explaining how to navigate certain business concepts/situations by saying “oh, you should read Paul Graham’s essay on that.” Hmm.</p>
<p>A major issue I have with such reads (your standard essays/books like PG’s essays, Crossing the Chasm, Four Steps to the Epiphany, etc. – entertaining reads, no doubt, the call here is to be mindful of what you absorb) is that in many cases they are retrospective. In retrospect, things are <em>misleadingly</em> clear. Why? Because the given individual has already gone through the scenario, experienced a given outcome he or she committed to while not having taken the opposite option in a choice situation and therefore is only able to really report on his/her unique direction taken. All comparative reports on the other potential choices are only speculative and shouldn’t be taken seriously.</p>
<p>Many people just tell me to read the great pieces of literature without letting them get into my head(!) – <em>if only I was the master of my mind…</em></p>
<p>Another issue for me is that these reads fundamentally deter you from making certain decisions that in that exact situation, in retrospect, were the “wrong” decisions to make. So, you’ll follow suit and not “make the same mistake.” Right? That’s an issue for me. </p>
<p>What if, in a new, similar situation (they can’t be identical), you made the same mistake? It is entirely reasonable to say the outcome will be negative/wrong as described in the read. However, it is also entirely reasonable to think the outcome will be different. In fact, by definition, the outcome can <strong>never</strong> be identical. <em>The entire sequence is never identical.</em> <strong>Even if</strong> the outcome is <strong>exactly</strong> the same, let’s say “wrong”, as the read had described, you would be robbed of making a mistake that could have resulted in learning through your unique perspective or could have led to another ripple that produced a phenomenal outcome for you. The sequence of events is entirely unique per individual, per situation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.” - Friedrich Neitzsche</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These reads, whether they try to or not, alter your trajectory and in many cases make you less creative than you would have been if you had absolutely NO CLUE how to react in that situation. That elimination of creativity is alarming to me. It frightens me. The reads are often delivered by very successful, proven individuals with immense social proof. So, many blindly listen and absorb whether they want to or not. You may attain a direction that will keep you on the safe path and not “make the same mistake,” but is that really what you want? I’m not sure. But I like to remain determined to be unique, creative and never conform. Now what’s the best way to do that?</p>