Silicon Valley Himalayan Expedition

Chickens and eggs

Mike Arrington at Techcrunch blogged about Mozes Friday, and raised the possibility that Mozes may be dealing with the classic chicken and egg problem.  The good news is that most entrepreneurs are used to dealing with the question regardless of the business. Whether it comes to raising capital, hiring employees, building product or finding customers, you learn pretty quickly not to care which comes first - you just go and get chickens and eggs all at the same time.  At a higher level however, when it comes to the business model, it's a critical question.

I spent the six years prior to Mozes in the b2b world, having started a company in March of 2000 specifically around b2b commerce.  You may remember Chemdex (can't link to it, but a great case study here) or any of the 2,000 or so companies like it back then.   Despite the promise of massive success if every buyer and supplier agreed to play together in a vertical market, merely assuming it would happen because it made sense if it did proved to be a pretty ugly assumption.  Like Chemdex and a few others at the time, we had to learn at our company that the best way to survive was to prove value in some small but important areas, and then be relentless in demonstrating and replicating that value across the targeted market.

I recently told an investor that I'm not a believer in businesses that can only be successful at massive scale.   It reminds me of the old Saturday Night Live commercial for the  company that made money by changing a dime into 2 nickels and a nickel into 5 pennies.  Massive scale will of course mean massive success, but a company must be successful at the most basic level before it can be massive.  One of the things I love about what we are doing is that we can enable smaller community activities - such as Maker Faire this weekend.

The point isn't that we are going to go after every upcoming cool county do-it-yourself science fair in the world (as cool as that would be).    In this particularly case, we are getting the chance literally to observe our product in action and learn from that experience to advance forward (plus, it's kind of cool having a Microsoft Mobile sign tell folks to text Mozes for more info).  The real target market we are pursuing is different, but our goals are built around demonstrating small-scale value that will translate across larger market opportunities.  Whether that's chickens or eggs first, I must admit I can't really say.

Sometimes a blogger comes along...

We are keeping a low profile at Mozes, but we plan to keep track of what people say about us out there in the world.  Our team of six was sure happy to see this post from new company expert Saul Weiner yesterday.  (Ok, he may not be an expert yet, but he sure seems to be putting out a lot of great commentary on new companies).  Thanks Saul!  We've got lots of improvements coming over the next 4 weeks before we start shamelessly promoting Mozes, but getting this kind of review is rewarding.  We'll keep you posted on some interesting note related stuff in the coming weeks.

The personal web and the real world

The personal web is a phrase I'd love to say I coined myself last year, but a quick search proved me wrong.  John Battelle delivered us this term when he introduced readers to Furl - a precursor to delicious - almost two years ago.  It seeems the folks at Furl were fond enough of John's description to adopt it as a tagline.

The concept of a personal web had a big impact on the creation of Mozes.  When I started thinking about building a new business, I wanted to participate in an area that would continue to grow for a very long time and it  seemed obvious that the web would continue to grow not only as a place to find information, but a place to store, manage and share it too.  I explored a lot of ideas in this area, from bookmarking to online storage, and concluded that expanding the concept might be the most fun.

As we launch our beta, Mozes fits within the larger context of the personal web.  As John pointed out, having your personal web is a pretty cool thing because anything you see on the web is saveable,  searchable and shareable.   Wouldn't it be cool if many of the situations we encountered in the real world were saveable, searchable and shareable too?  Mozes will deliver a platform to help make that happen.

I can't wait for 2006

John Battelle has kicked off a great conversation to end 2005 that I predict will carry over well into 2006.  Fred Wilson picked up on it and made it the basis for number 7 of his New Year's Resolutions.

John was letting us know about the amazing work of Phil Torrone of Make Magazine.  There are many people in the world who pretend to be extremely busy and fewer who actually are.  Phil Torrone is one of the busiest guys on the planet.  Phil is associate editor at Make (in addition to being an author, artist and engineer).  If you don't know of Phil but want to get a small glimpse of what I am talking about,  check out the MAKE: Blog.  Not a day goes by that Phil hasn't written at least a post or two, if not 4 or 10.  He not only blogs to tell us what other amazing people do but also fills us in on his incredible trials, errors, experiments and inventions (like how he celebrated New Year's tonight). 

Phil created the MAKEbot.  In John's opinion, it sets the stage for how mobile gets plugged into the web in a way that makes sense for the average person.  John's post generated a lot of comments on the last day of the year, and it should - he believes that Phil's work might just spearhead something truly new and important for mobile.  I'd bet Phil agrees with him, and I'd bet even more Phil already has about 50 ideas that will truly stun John and everyone else once they are released.  That's the kind of thing Phil tends to do.

IM is an important input/output vehicle for what Mozes is doing in building a platform for many types of mobile services.  We see SMS as probably more important for the business early on, but there is no doubt in my mind that a ubiquitous free wireless Internet (see Fred's number 5 resolution) means that over the long term non-carrier means will really drive innovation.  We registered an IM account for Mozes for all 4 major networks in September, but the possibilities that John writes about get really interesting if and when IM networks converge.  As C. Enrique Ortiz wrote just a few days ago:  With respect to mobility, this convergence translates to a real-time, dynamic alternative to SMS and MMS.

In 2 weeks, Mozes will have a real website and production environment (not a vicious circle).  We also have our own AIM bot that I hope many people will want to help test as well.  I disagree with a few of the comments on Searchblog because like John I see Phil's work as truly innovative.  Even though it wasn't Mozes who made another one of John's predictions come true in 2005, we can't wait to be a contributor to the success of it in 2006.

(When searching for the post to Phil's location based dog video, I noticed Make's new section called "Something I want to learn to do..." - I want to learn how to get as much stuff done as Phil does).

 

Hiring students - part II

Here is an update on my experience with Rotman MBA students over the summer.

We finished our project in August according to schedule.  The students provided the following assistance for Mozes:

(a) North American market research
(b) business model framework
(c) market sizing for specific opportunities

The two primary students on the task were Navine Aggarwal and Vincent-Nicolas Gladu.  They also hired an undergraduate student who participated in the assignment.

All of the students' work was incorporated into the business plan in some form or another.   The work was excellent and provided great pieces of building block type information for the formation of the business plan.  They were very good at supplying all of the raw data used in their analysis and we ensured that deliverables were kept succinct.

One of the fun and challenging parts of entrepreneurship is the need to change the business plan just about every day.  However, there is a big difference between changing the business plan because you learn something new and changing it because a new idea pops into your head.  By working with the Rotman students, I was able to gain a base understanding of  key market factors in about half the time it would have taken me on my own.  Everything I learned from them has influenced the business plan today in a significant way.

Now it's my turn to make Mozes, Inc. something they'd be proud to put on their resumes.

About this blog

Now that I have the most important question out of the way, I wanted to let people know what to expect from this blog.  First, it is a business blog and I will try to limit my thoughts to matters of business.  When I stray, hopefully it is to illustrate something of value in business too.  Second, I intend to comment primarily on the the Internet, the desktop and mobile devices.  I have a hunch that we are at just the beginning of how all three relate to each other.  I am sure other business topics will catch my interest from time to time though.  Third, I am hopeful that this blog can be enjoyed by employees, users, customers, partners, directors, advisors, shareholders and friends of Mozes.  Mozes will have its own blog (and a more complete website) at the right time, but I expect to draw a lot from my experience there in the coming years.  Finally, I won't be a prolific writer.  I will find time when I can in between work and family.

Why did I quit my job and not moonlight?

Answered best by W.H. Murray: Until one is committed there is always a hesitancy, the chance to draw back,  always ineffectiveness.  Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.  All sorts of things occur to help one that would have otherwise never have occurred.  A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no one could have dreamt would have come their way.