Disqus - Latest Comments for LeeHoffman

Re: Does the Lean Startup revolutionize bootstrapped marketing?

LeeHoffman — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:17:37 -0000

Great summary of the topic Matt. For those interested in Lean Startup / Customer Development, the NY (http://www.meetup.com/lean-startup/) and SF meetup groups (http://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Circle/) seem to have become the center of the community now and are great places to get advice / learn more about this methodology as it develops.

Re: American Express and The Recovery…Does the Connection Matter Anymore?

LeeHoffman — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:54:01 -0000

Howard, I couldn't agree more. Amex used to be a fantastic company, with fantastic customer service. If you ever had a problem, Amex went out of their way to make sure you were happy at the end of the day. Whatever is going on inside the company now though is pathetic. Ive been a loyal card holder for more than a decade, currently have 3 cards, and have put millions of dollars on these cards for the startups ive run (and my personal life) during that period. And I can count the number of times ive paid any bill to them late on one finger. Yet last week when i went to create a card for a new business (i.e. to give them more business), they said "policy prevents us from allowing any individual from having more than 3 cards. No exceptions.". I pointed out my history, personal and business credit, and the vast array of business ive brought them, to which they replied that this was one of many policies that have recently been implemented, and there is no discussion. They refused to transfer me to a manager.

When a company moves from clear and personalized service, to "scared shitless" one size fits all rules, its a great bet the management is lost. Sad to watch.

Re: http://mashable.com/2009/03/10/twitter-followholic/

LeeHoffman — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:59:54 -0000

I'm coining an idiom for this one: when masses of people act in seemingly irrational ways, its not because they are irrational, its because the system is. Twitter's design, much like Myspace's used to, emphasizes follower counts, even at the cost of using twitter to get quality information. There are a number of ways Twitter can solve this, but just telling people to act differently probably isn't one of them:

http://www.squawkingtech.com/2009/01/popping-th...

Re: The Obama Crash

LeeHoffman — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:27:34 -0000

Our economy is facing a number of significant challenges right now, but we are also an incredibly entrepreneurial country with a base level of technology and transparency that is truly stunning compared to historical standards. Unfortunately you're absolutely right that many of the same decisions that we made to get into this mess, are still being made at the highest levels of government. In fact in some ways its actually getting worse.

The problems of leadership really fall into two core areas: 1) we're not allowing malinvestment and bad management to be liquidated quickly, 2) we're mortgaging future growth for short term pain relief.

And as smart as Obama is, he's championing both. There's more to the story of why we had an Obama crash, but this is a big part of it: http://www.squawkingtech.com/2009/01/why-the-ma...

Re: The Great Twitter Ponzi Scheme

LeeHoffman — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:03:58 -0000

By definition a Ponzi scheme is one where there are no real gains to investors in aggregate. This isn't the case with Twitter, people do actually read messages. With this said, I think you're making an excellent point about over-exuberance for increasing followers. Right now there is an imbalance between the amount of time and effort people are putting in (with the hope of getting a future reward) and the amount of value they are getting out of this.

I wrote a post on this exact subject (http://www.squawkingtech.com/2009/01/popping-th...), with the basic idea being that what you're describing is not a ponzi scheme, but a classic bubble. There are a number of ways Twitter can help pop the bubble and create a sustainable platform, but as you mentioned, all of them ultimately break down to maximizing quality.

Re: We Need Price Transparency In The Splurge

LeeHoffman — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:18:30 -0000

Mark Cuban suggested last week that the government create an ETF with the assets in order to create the transparency you're suggesting: http://blogmaverick.com/2008/09/26/my-bailout-s...

There are problems with this though (mainly that it will be politically disastrous, and thus unlikely to happen): http://www.squawkingtech.com/2008/09/mark-cuban...

Re: Rules For The Splurge

LeeHoffman — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 14:08:45 -0000

Hey Fred, In principal these sound like good ideas, but like most rigid sets of rules, they will likely have adverse effects if imposed in a top down manner. For example:

Rule 1: A million dollars seems like a high bar, cutting off all salaries above that level seems like a good way to reign in on excess. And it might. But it will also incentivizes the great people to leave and the mediocre people to stay. Imagine a situation where you have a sales person or money manager who is generating $500M a year in revenue for the company. Capping their salary at $1M will just cause them to leave. Who won't leave? The people that don't mind 1) getting their salary capped because they know they can't get paid more elsewhere, or 2) people not worth being paid that money in the first place.

This isn't to say that these ideas can't be put into practice, but it has to be done on a more flexible, case by case basis. In other words, one rule doesn't fit all. To turn these companies around and provide uncle sam the maximum ROI for its investment, many existing agreements, contracts, and compensation schedules will need to be modified. However it will likely need to be done by exceptional management at the top of each company.