How to Create Products People Love

Building a product that people like is hard, and building a product that people love is even harder. Last week I recorded the webinar above with two of our excellent Founder Institute New York mentors: Patrick Schoonveld and Alberto Escalarte!

Through the video both Patrick and Alberto discuss how to better understand, discover and interpret customer pain points. Along with how to use those insights to inform your product development. They also answered several questions from the audience by suggesting many tools, software, and tips to help you think about how you are building your product today. Click play on the video above to watch now.

Alberto Escarlate - CTO, Throwing Fruit

Alberto Escarlate is a mix of entrepreneur, product strategist, investor, designer and professor. Before joining Throwing Fruit he was the CEO of Paris-based startup FileChat and before that worked as a VC at the Collaborative Fund. Alberto co-founded Causely (f.k.a. Sojo), a company that provides joyful and accessible ways for people to join with others to do lasting social good. Throughout his career he has led a number of digital products for companies including AT&T, Delta, General Motors, IBM and Kraft Foods.

Patrick Schoonveld - Product Management Director, Criteo

Product management leader with over 15 years of experience across the full lifecycle of software product development. From assessing the market opportunity to launch and on to growth, his passion is building great software products and businesses.

Live Video + NYC = Geoff Golberg

Yesterday I caught up with Geoff Golberg, NYC's live video expert. If you have been following me for more than a year now you know I love how live video is changing the world. Geoff loves it too. So much so that his work with live video over the last year got him nominated as Periscoper of the Year at the Shorty Awards right alongside other popular Scopers such as Gary Vaynerchuk, Tom Green and more.

So yesterday after some coffee and lunch we hit the streets of New York City armed with our smartphones and some live streaming apps in search of some great content to stream live. After all;

"Content Is King" - Bill Gates

And content is also now fleeting. Both Periscope and Snapchat disappear after 24 hours. So before it is gone, go right now and quickly watch what we were up too around New York City. Here are the links to our profiles on the following social networks: 

Geoff's:

• Periscope (archive)
• Snapchat
• Twitter

Kevin's:

• Periscope (archive)
• Snapchat (archive)
• Twitter

I wanted to share some of the insightful takeaways from hanging our afternoon of live video streaming. First off as mentioned, content is actually king. Unlike other forms of media, with live video streaming the content has to be happening right now for you to film it and broadcast it simultaneously. You can't record it and edit later. Luckily living in NYC means that finding live content is not much of an issue. Second, a strong cell signal and wifi are a must! Before going live, it was important to take a moment and ensure that you had a strong data connection. If you don't then your audience quickly loses interest and leaves your pixilated low quality stream. Without strong data you mine as well go home. Lastly, you need to post a lot! Posting once and awhile is not enough to build an actual audience.

I was impressed to see the community that Geoff had build and how engaged his followers were once he went live on Periscope or he Snapchatted to his story. I can't wait to see how the evolution of live video continues in 2016 or how Geoff further explores it with his audiences. 

Don't Forget To Look Up

The irony is that I am about to ask you to look at screen in order to tell you to "Look Up". You have 2 options as I see it. You can put your technology away right now and go experience the world. Or you can watch this video, and then go experience the world. Either way, get out there. This is your friendly reminder, do not forget to look up. 

Time Management For Entrepreneurs

I believe there is tremendous value in optimization. Increasing effectiveness even by a slight amount can have exponential effects as a result. Since taking a step back and thinking about planning my life in 2016 I have been working on ways to optimize life. One of those is time management, which I feel is something that can have a profound impact on most entrepreneurs. 

I value time as the most important asset in my life. It is finite. The fact is that there is no Department of Time to print more hours, days or years like there is a Department of Treasury to print more money when the supply runs low. 

There are 24 hours in a day. That is all you get. Make sure you spend each one of those hours wisely. We have been given the gift of time and it is our duty to make the most of it. Those 24 hours will be spent on either sleep, work, exercise, family, fun or free time.

I was originally going to elaborately detail my own day for this post but I have really liked the way Casey Neistat broke down his daily routine using the painted domino's visually in the below video. I have skipped ahead to the good part of the video (3:32) so you can jump right in. My routine in 2016 has been very similar to the image above. The major difference being that I swap vlog time with blog and podcast time. Also a night or two a week family time gets swapped for me with running event's in the evening around New York. 

I like the balance that routine brings to the day in order to allow for more productivity in the long run. It also helps reduce burn out, which can be a real issue for entrepreneurs if not addressed. I look forward to continuing to maximize each day to the fullest potential I can. Let me know if you have a routine or any suggestions on maximizing the day. Feel free to put them in the comments below. 

3 Minutes Of Your Time: I Dare You To Watch This Entire Video

We all know its happening. It started somewhere between 2005-2010 when you bought your first smartphone. Over the next year, the way your brain worked began to change.

You probably noticed that your brain had a new friend through out the day, dopamine. Constantly fueled by Angry Birds, E-mail, the internet, Facebook, etc. Unfortunately, around that time you also stopped using your imagination in the same way. Unless you worked in a creative industry, you didn't need it anymore. If you had a burning question about life or that meal you just ate you could simply reach in your pocket and Google it. Voilà, the answer and some more dopamine are a mere reach away! No more waiting for and wondering what the answer could be. No more using your imagination to come up with creative solutions to the questions in your mind. I am not quite sure what the long lasting loss of imagination will be on society as a whole, but I don't imagine it could be too good. 

That being said, the mass granting of access to information has been a powerful movement since web 1.0, but it has been a few years now. We need to ask ourselves is the knowledge we soak up like a sponge from the internet everyday the best use of our time, the most precious resource we are ever given. We must remember to protect our time.

So how bad have you gotten and how bad is your old friend dopamine affecting you today? Let's find out. I recently watched a video from Adam Conover who is the host of TV's Adam Ruins Everything, a pretty brilliant show if you haven't checked it out yet. In this video Adam asks for 3 minutes of your time. 3 minutes of your focused, attention, distraction free time. The best part of this video isn't actually the video itself, it is the self awareness that is created with every little lunge for your phone, browser tab you think to open, or fear of boredom you experience while you are watching. So give it a shot. I dare you to watch this entire video.

Jason Calacanis Answers My Question On "This Week In Startups"

I asked Jason Calacanis on the This Week In Startups Ask Jason segment how Apple Watch will deal with glanceables, a new form of UI intended to deliver a user a notification and then return them back to their day as fast as possible. Jason answered and here is what he had to say: 

why glancables are going to be the next big thing in wearables: interacting w/your devices with your... eyes! https://t.co/mv4sDgIuqv

— jason (@Jason) October 2, 2015

Why You Should Guest Vlog

If you are a blogger then you know one of the top ways to grow your audience is exposure on other blogs. Everyone tries to do it and it works in a very symbiotic way. Person one gains some followers from person two's audience and then vice versa person two gains some followers from person ones audience. 

This doesn't only work for blogs though and there is a new medium growing in the world right now. Thanks to the increase and accessibility to bandwidth more and more people are consuming video through the day. This has led to the rise of the daily video blog, hence forth referred to as the vlog. 

Vlogging is growing in frequency as many content creators realize the high value of having consistent content and it's ability to repeatedly bring the same users back for more.  This is opposed to creating one hit wonder viral videos. With a consistent flow of content that can be found in the same spot the audience seeks you out more often. They know they can count on new fresh content every time they visit. 

So as vlogging grows we are going to see some interesting strategies to grow these new video audiences. One of those happened recently and is a great example of collaborative guest vlogging.  Last week Casey Neistat, a vlogger residing in NYC, flew out to Ohio to hang out with Roman Atwood. Casey currently averages about 300 thousand views per daily vlog, while Roman Atwood currently averages around 1 million views. 

This is the end result below and it is pretty cool in a sort of Bill Murray Groundhog Day kind of way. Watch the same day, from two different camera angles, two different approaches to editing, and two different audiences.

The Day From Casey Neistat's Perspective: 

 

The Day From Roman Atwood's Perspective: 

Teenagers, Technology, and Trends

As I write this it is Sunday night and I am getting some work done while the Teen Choice Awards are on the TV in the background. At this same time my youngest brother Alec, a teenager, is packing for college. As we grow up and older we tend to lose touch with the younger generations coming after us, without realizing it. Alec, jokingly and in little brother fashion, tends to make sure I remember this whenever I see him. Joking or not though, he is right. 

It is important we pay attention and realize what is happening across all living generations. Especially those generations that can drive a wave of change through industries. The youngest generations are still refining their tastes as they age and because of that they are incredibly powerful. Like a bull in a china shop deciding which new app to take off the shelf.

Some of those businesses in the last few years which captured the attention of teenagers and were marked as early successes by them include Yik Yak, Vine, Jott and of course Snapchat. According to a recent Pew Research study, 71% of teenagers use multiple social media services. 52% of teens are on Instagram, 41% on Snapchat, 33% on Twitter, and 24% on Vine. 

Most of these businesses have a common core. They allow teenagers to create. To create videos, messages, threads, and new content. On a day to day basis teens get the option to create something much more than other recent generations. They are the first age group to grow up completely from being a little kid while knowing what a Like, Retweet, or Fav is. And they are getting good at it. Teens are getting to be highly skilled with the ability to create. They are not happy with simply consuming others creations. 

I think that was reinforced at Sunday nights Teen Choice Awards. The final awards of the night were not for Best Picture (Oscars) or Record of the Year (Grammys). Both awards that typically require the backing of massive corporations, studios, and labels in order to win. Sundays "Finale" awards were for Best Web Star.

We are seeing that this new class of teens is a group that admires and prefers authentic creations over what the generic media, studios, and labels pushes at them. Don't worry though, advertisers always find a way to get in with were the target audiences have shifted their gaze.

For now though, Bethany Mota won best Female Web Star and Cameron Dallas won best Male Web Star. Two people who created a following of millions, using platforms that are driven almost solely by the end user. I should also add they were the most happy, passionate, and excited about winning the award. That too felt more authentic.

So, to my point, and I will be sure to check in with my younger brothers if I am right or not, but I believe that removing the filters of traditional broadcasting and reaching an audience directly is clearly more powerful and will only continue to grow in power as this class of teens becomes adults. I think these teenagers will not only increase this trend, but hammer it home. This will be the future.  The teenagers have already stated it as so. 

Why Periscope Should Embrace Landscape Video

Periscope App

Why should Periscope embrace landscape video. The answer to this question is one word. YouTube. 

The best Scopes are done by people who know how to engage their audience via video on a mobile device. We could spend months waiting for the best Periscopers to naturally emerge in the wild and eventually nail down how to get viewers to engage on the platform. Or we could enable a group of people who have spent years perfecting the skill of engaging and curating a mobile camera experience on a day to day basis.  The YouTubers. The users of a company whose very slogan is "Broadcast Yourself".

In many ways Periscope almost feels as if it should have been bought by YouTube and not Twitter. A little bit of proof that Twitter is on point with its innovation and acquisitions. 

Normal everyday people are unsure of what to say or afraid to engage with the camera when on periscope. But YouTubers know their audiences and are not shy in that experience. They know how to talk to an audience and how to engage them. We love to watch them. So here is the trick.

Periscope already allows you to save a Scope to your camera role when you are done. If Periscope embraced landscape mode it would allow YouTubers to every time use Periscope to initially record their videos while engaging with users in real time, then save that video to their camera role, and finally use that video for uploading to YouTube. Create once, while directly engaging your audience, and then easily syndicate! 

You can do this process currently but then you have a vertical video with black bars on both sides. And lets be honest, nobody wants to watch that. Vertical Video Syndrome is bad. And if you rotate your phone while on Periscope, as an attempted solution, you will have some very angry commenters coming at you pretty quickly because the comments do not rotate. A few simple additional UI changes when the screen is rotated could be a game changer. 

Content creators on all platforms do a lot of work. They have to syndicate content and manage audiences on multiple platforms. By periscope enabling this one feature it would enable YouTube content creators to more easily use one action for multiple platforms. In return, periscope would get next level high quality content creators for its platform. It's a no brainier. 

What Does Periscope’s Live Mobile Streaming Mean To Media

This week I ran into a dilemma at the intersection of media and technology. In the last flew weeks we have got some amazing new technology in the live mobile streaming space. Meerkatand Twitter owned Periscope. The mobile app live streaming these apps enable feels really new and exciting. It reminds of when we first heard about Twitter. Not surprisingly though, just like when social media was new and we had to have a national conversation about its impacts on society, it is time to do so once again with this new technology.

If you know me then you know I love early adopting and testing new technologies. I am still optimistically waiting for the Google Glass comeback in a few years time. I also run a website or two. One of them beingTheHerdReport.com. The team and I played with both Meerkat and Periscope on our personal accounts recently. Afterword our next thought was how incredibly cool it would be to use them while covering live events. Obviously this technology would be a perfect fit to use with The Herd Report. The technology gives us, the underdog, the ability to be a lot closer to being on the same level as those incumbents with expensive TV broadcast cameras. Obviously it makes sense for us to use these new apps. Then something happened. We recoiled.

We were afraid. Afraid that the giants whose shoulders we stand on, those teams we love, constantly cover, and promote might get upset we were live streaming. We love working with them so obviously we started to think more in depth about this. After all, we constantly hear stories in the news about piracy. So we wanted to make sure we wouldn’t upset anyone and this lead us to the question: At a live event, specifically in this case sports event, who owns the actual event itself? I started researching.

I tried to initially look into this by researching how fan created media that is not live is treated. Then to see if the fact that something is now happening live change how we should treat it? This is what I found.

“Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.”

— Richard A. Denmon

Keep in mind I am not a lawyer and this is just my basic current understanding of this confusing new space after some little research. The key word in the above definition of copyright is “fixed”. This is important because it creates a big distinction. For example, an event like a broadway musical, concert, ballet, or other theatrical performance has every movement staged by the author and is therefore “fixed”. This means the copyright lies on the events unfolding on the stage itself.

In the case of sports events though, the events are always random play by play and therefore are not fixed. Meaning the copyright does not lie with the actual event itself. In the case of sports events it turns out that it is actually the broadcasts of the event that is copyrightable. The unique combination of choreographed angles, on screen graphics, announcers, etc is what makes the live broadcast a fixed piece of copyrightable art. Again, keep in mind I am not a lawyer so please research this for yourself and let me know in the comments if you find anything different.

So it seems, at least to the best of my current knowledge, that the fans who create their own “broadcasts” at live non-fixed sports events on their own devices with unique iPhone camera angles and use their own voice as commentary, etc, would own that copyrightable content. Now keep in mind this is according to this definition of copyright law stated above. As for what abilities you waive when you purchase a ticket to a sports event or enter a stadium I am not sure and it probably varies venue to venue.

St. Peters Square in 2005 vs 2013.

My intention today is not to give a definitive answer to the questions I raised though. I am not sure there is one as this new technology is so new. More so my intent is to start the conversation about how this new technology will be treated. Why? Because I find all this incredibly new, interesting, and just plain old exciting. I can’t wait to see how live mobile streaming reaches its full potential.

Please let me know on Twitter, Periscope, or in the comments below if you know or hear of anything further. Looking forward to the discussion. Let’s start the conversation.