Disqus - Latest Comments for jaredran

Re: Strategyn’s Tony Ulwick on Jobs-to-be-Done

jaredran — Sun, 08 May 2016 19:21:21 -0000

Ryan, I like your thoughts here a lot. After spending a lot of time developing products with an agile workflow, I've been working on JTBD at thrv.com. I definitely see the two approaches as complementary.

JTBD gives you a tight target on which to focus your solution generation and confidence that if you serve the need, there's a size-able market on the other end who will care.

Agile is an excellent way to organize the process of building a solution and finding out if you are executing it well.

By pairing the two, you have a creative constraint around what solutions to build and a clear definition of "executing it well" that is customer-focused. Does it serve the need faster or more accurately than previous solutions?

Before my introduction to JTBD, I used agile in combination with Lean. Our success criteria was the One Metric that Matters. Of course, we could've said the OMTM was the speed at which we served the need, which would have been a clever move! But instead, the metric always centered on the customer's interaction with our product (eg. pageviews/visit, daily active users, etc) or a business metric, such as revenue. As a result, our focus became 'how to get the user to do more with our product' rather than 'how to help the customer do what they are trying to do' i.e. get the job done.

In short, I agree with you and wanted to support it with my experience.

Re: The Gig Economy

jaredran — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 19:15:01 -0000

I did a quick command-F and it looks like nobody has brought up Nick Hanuer's essay on this topic: http://www.democracyjournal...

He puts the issues at hand in stark terms and offers a really interesting policy idea: a Shared Security Account. Unclear if it would be gov't run or privatized, but the idea is every employer and freelance worker pays a little into this fund out of every check and in return gets benefits normally available to only full-time workers such as paid vacation, paid sick leave, paid family leave, overtime, 401(k), etc. The benefits are accrued by hour worked and independent of any one job so you can contribute from multiple jobs at once or in sequence.

Whether or not it's the exact right path forward, it's a really interesting idea to entertain.

Re: Getting To Broadband For All

jaredran — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 00:00:03 -0000

What if we skipped the broadband expansion and moved into high speed mobile networks and increasing smartphone penetration? If you want to use a laptop, you can tether it to your phone to access the internet. Or we can have laptops with SIM cards.

Re: Website Builder Market Landscape

jaredran — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 12:15:54 -0000

Makes sense. Thanks for the reply!

Re: Website Builder Market Landscape

jaredran — Mon, 06 Apr 2015 20:17:42 -0000

Great chart. Would be interesting to see revenue numbers for each company too. Do you have that data?

Re: Culture and Psychology in Fundraising

jaredran — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 16:31:33 -0000

Thanks!

Sounds like there's a good story in there.

Re: Culture and Psychology in Fundraising

jaredran — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 14:46:20 -0000

Thanks! I added it.

Touche' on VORP...

Re: Culture and Psychology in Fundraising

jaredran — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 14:26:18 -0000

Totally agree. I've always liked the phrase, "it's just the first 'no.'"

Re: Culture and Psychology in Fundraising

jaredran — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 11:45:59 -0000

The logic of avoiding what everyone else is doing makes perfect sense to me from the investor POV. It's a little bit scary as an entrepreneur.

If investors are all mavericks, the logical extreme implies there's only one who sees eye-to-eye with your investment thesis. It's funny to think of your board as a handful of Groucho Marxes.

While it's good to not have investors who jump in only because others did, this means you're going to hear "no" a lot regardless of the quality of your pitch. Since most entrepreneurs are over-achievers, this makes the process emotionally fraught. I'm pretty sure the only answer is thick skin and a short memory. ;-)

Here's a post I wrote about this a few months ago: http://jaredranere.com/2014...

Re: Focus

jaredran — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 23:36:18 -0000

I happened to be listening to the Steve Jobs book on tape over the weekend and spent most of yesterday afternoon talking about focus as a result. I've experienced this lesson in so many different ways. When you talk about how many 'businesses' you're in, it's critical to have a clear and cold definition of what constitutes a 'business.' It's very easy to wordsmith your way to not admitting that you're in multiple businesses, and it takes a lot of discipline to avoid that.

Re: Runnin Scared - Myles Tanzer - NYC Nomad, Who Says Hes Not a Hipster, Lives New York One Hood at a Time

jaredran — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 16:26:59 -0000

I work with Ed at Outside.in and am the guy who's mentioned in his tweet about the Village Voice Awards. I vouch for him definitely not being a hipster.

Re: AVC Mobile

jaredran — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:31:42 -0000

I prefer seeing the entirety of the first post. Frequent readers, who probably make up more of the mobile audience, will have already seen the headlines of the previous posts.

Re: Facebook Adding Location Features This Month [REPORT]

jaredran — Fri, 07 May 2010 11:33:51 -0000

One of the things I like about Foursquare is how certain features encourage healthy behavior, like the gym rat badge. Go to the gym a lot, get healthy, and get rewarded with a badge. It's like they're looking out for all of us who check into bars a little too often. Facebook rolling out their first partnership with McDonald's promotes unhealthy behavior and doesn't coincide with my values at all. It makes me feel disconnected from them.

Re: http://blog.appify.com/post/369331758

jaredran — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:17:56 -0000

while you're thinking beta i vote for an indication along with each app of what platform it works on: android, iphone, bberry, etc.

Re: AVC People

jaredran — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:59:20 -0000

@jaredran Would love to be on the list. I've been reading since I started at Outside.in 2 1/2 years ago.

Re: Hyperlocal Goes Mainstream: CNN teams up with Outside.in

jaredran — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:15:20 -0000

Ah, a Hyde Parker! I used to live there! Would love to hear your thoughts about our outside.in Hyde Park page (http://outside.in/hyde-park... vs. Chicago Breaking News Center's Hyde Park page (http://www.chicagobreakingn.... The former is our uncurated fire hose. The latter is our content curated by the CBNC editors at The Tribune. Do the editors give you a more compelling page (w/o too much UofC or Obama news)?

Re: Hyperlocal Goes Mainstream: CNN teams up with Outside.in

jaredran — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:08:57 -0000

Hyperlocal analytics are certainly in the mix in some form or another. You can see our initial stab at it by signing up for or logging in at outside.in/geotoolkit. We've learned a lot since we launched the Stats page in GeoToolkit and are refining the offering. Again, this is something I'd love to here specific thoughts from you on.

Re: Hyperlocal Goes Mainstream: CNN teams up with Outside.in

jaredran — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:14:59 -0000

Shana, did you try searching for your zip code on outside.in? Did that make the results any better?

On the human curation piece, we agree--it's necessary. Fred zeroed in on a critical aspect of Outside.in for Publishers. We're not saying to a news outlet, "here, take the fire hose and best of luck to you." We're saying, "you have tons of experience in your market and have built on audience (or are building an audience) based on your editorial voice. Here's all the content and some tools that make it easy for you to display the headlines you want. Now, use your voice and experience to give your audience something you think is great."

Re: Hyperlocal Goes Mainstream: CNN teams up with Outside.in

jaredran — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:22:02 -0000

First off, we are huge fans of your blog and hold you up as an example to which other hyperlocal writers should aspire.

As to the benefit...yes, you are correct in that more traffic is the baseline benefit, and as our network grows the size of that traffic will be more meaningful. We are also working on building out our services for bloggers. We're closing in on some key ideas that I think you'll find exciting. What you say about links to local advertisers certainly piques my interest, and I'd like to hear you elaborate on this. Drop me a note at jared@outside.in if you're as interested as I am in discussing this further.

Re: Hyperlocal Goes Mainstream: CNN teams up with Outside.in

jaredran — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:17:09 -0000

W/o revealing too much of our secret sauce, I will say that detecting the actual name of a neighborhood is not the only means we use of attaching a neighborhood to a story. There are opportunities for publishers and bloggers to tell us what they're writing about. Utilizing GeoRSS Point is one good way. While I consent that we do have issues with false positives on occasion, I'll also put out there that we aren't utilizing backfill right now. But, it is a feature we're working on offering as an option for publishers.

You can read our FAQ on this topic to understand fully what you can do now to give us hint: http://outside.in/faq?utm_s...

Needless to say, all of this can get quite complex. I won't bore you with anymore details.

Re: At #NewBiz, Bloggers and Mainstream Media Search for a Relationship

jaredran — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:17:55 -0000

Slayne, we certainly agree with your second paragraph, that newspaper companies are going to have to get wise, open their platform, and partner.

We're working on what this new ad sales model looks like, and we don't think that the big media guys have no place in it. Here's what we see: the ad sales rep who currently has a million dollar quota to sell print advertising will not be able to meet this quota by only selling for his outfit because as his print inventory decreases he won't have enough inventory, even with all of the pageviews his site enjoys. He'll still have a 7 figure quota, but he'll have to be a lot more creative on how he fulfills it and he'll want as much super-targeted online inventory as he can get his hands on. This means selling the inventory on his own site, on your site, and on other bloggers' sites. He'll sell some campaigns directly and bundle others with networks. Since the big media guys already have big audiences and professional sales teams with advertiser relationships, we don't think they should go away but rather they should adapt and join the ecosystem, as you say.

Re: National Media Companies Chase Local

jaredran — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:38:00 -0000

Hey ROIGuy, we too have noticed that The Trib is making a big local play. In fact, thery're one of the Outside.in for Publishers power users. You can see what they're doing at http://www.chicagobreakingn.... They're using Chicago Breaking News Center as a central portal through which to access all of the Trib's different properties, and they're using our platform to aggregate it all, as well as a few other news sources. Then, they use a Map Widget on chicagotribune.com local news section fronts (such as http://www.chicagotribune.c... to drive readers who want local news to that Neighborhood News Page on Chicago Breaking News. It's their own little news ecosystem, and we're big fans of it.

Re: http://blog.outside.in/2009/07/08/384/

jaredran — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:54:34 -0000

Hey Pat, just go to http://publishers.outside.in and sign up for a Beta Invite. We'll help you the rest of the way as much as you need!

Re: StoryMap Roundup: Big, Medium, New

jaredran — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:20:11 -0000

Matt, you better be careful with that beer offer--our office is in Brooklyn! Feel free to swing by. We'll show you our digs and what we're up to.

That's an open invitation to all you New York area bloggers, by the way. Leave a comment if you want to come visit.

Re: StoryMap Roundup: Big, Medium, New

jaredran — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:18:07 -0000

Thanks for the heads up on your social networks. We're certainly already familiar with them as we noticed you put StoryMaps on them. Great to see you embracing the tools!