I just discovered the eBay Speaker Series with allows eBay employees to meet with experts and leaders of the industry. I checked that I am allowed to blog about all these great conferences and since the answer is yes, I am really glad to be able to share them with you. Today, this conference was a paradise for my brain: everything seemed to fall into place, to make perfect sense. We had the chance of receiving Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. For those who don’t know Zappos (and if it is the case, you’re probably European), it is the first online shoe retailer is the US, but before all, it is one of those companies completely shifting the paradigm in their approach of customer service. I pass quickly on Tony H.’s history which is anyway pretty impressive (cofounder of LinkExchange sold to MSFT for $265m, cofounder of an incubator which led him to Zappos) and on Zappos history (founded in 1999, now 1600 employees), but instead focus on Tony’s vision.

First, I was surprised by their mission: I thought that they would naturally choose “becoming the largest shoe retailer in the world” or “becoming the largest accessories retailer”. No, instead they chose something way more inspiring for customers and actionable by employees: “providing the best online experience possible”. Tony H. chose not to compete on prices, but on products and service instead, to drive repeat customers (very successfully strategy since 75% of purchases are from returning customers which on average have higher order size that first time ones). And how does it translate currently into their business? By a number of policies: free shipping and free return shipping, 365 day return policy, 24/7 1-800 number. Well, it seems interesting, but some e-tailers are doing the same, right? It seems that the differentiating factor is how these policies are implemented. For example, the number to reach the customer service is on every single page of the web site: Zappos wants their customers to call them, whereas other e-tailers try by all means to make you find your product or answer by your own. Tony H. mentioned that he sees the customer service as an immense branding opportunity, a unique way to speak directly to your customers. Customer satisfaction is the only focus: customer reps sometimes refer customers to competitors’ websites if Zappos is out of stock on a particular model. By the way, on this particular example, Zappos is only reproducing what local retailers, especially in small cities, have always done, but is doing it at a larger scale.

But what are the processes to achieve this customer satisfaction? I’ll pass quickly on a number of operational measures (reps don’t have a maximum call time to follow and are not incentivized on sales, warehouse run 24/7, inventory all products…) but instead focus on the culture. I am always skeptical when I hear a company saying that they rely on their culture to make things right: a nice sign with 10 really basic principles at the entrance of a corporate building has never helped me determine the strategy of a company. Even the really consensual Google’s “don’t be evil” is now questioned! But at Zappos, the difference is that the core values are really committable and that decisions, especially the crucial ones like hiring, firing and evaluating performance, are made in accordance with the culture. Notably, all employees spend 5 weeks in training to learn the culture, and customer reps are given $1000 to leave the company during the training if they feel that they don’t fit with the culture of customer satisfaction. And which impact does it make on the business? It seems that once you get the culture right, the decisions are much easier to make. Tony H. gave a lot of really good examples and I just picked one: a widow wanted to return shoes from her deceased husband, and the rep who managed the case took the initiative on her own to send flowers to the widow on behalf of Zappos. The widow was so moved by the gesture that she mentioned it during the funeral. Of course there is no guideline for this kind of situation, but having the right culture gives you confidence that your employees will do the right thing in terms of human behavior but also for the company (the widow and some members of the family are now repeat customers!).

But finally, what about the costs involved? Tony H. sees customer service as an investment and not an expense: Zappos has been profitable since last year but could have been profitable 4 years ago; instead, it invested in free overnight shipping and other aspects of customer satisfaction. But he is also extremely rigorous about ROI: whereas offering free shipping the same day would totally fit into the culture, it doesn’t make any sense from a business standpoint and therefore hasn’t been implemented.

I didn’t have time to ask the question about whether or not they plan to go global, because it would be a totally different challenge to maintain the same level of CS on a global scale. So if I’m lucky and Tony sees this article, I hope he’ll reply here

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Hello, Fidji here. I remember that, for one of my first articles on Tech It Easy, I spoke about it with Jeremy and he told me “that’s interesting, but there is no way you are going to make your point if you don’t draw something to show it”. And I didn’t, because I couldn’t find a way of summarizing it all in a simple picture. I thought it was better with words only, but truly it wasn’t. That’s the point that Dan Roam is trying to make in his book “The back of the napkin”.

Dan was today’s speaker at the eBay Speaker Series conference, so I had the chance to enjoy hearing him explain his theory. He is convinced that any business problem can be solved by a simple picture, that anybody has the ability to draw. But we often believe that we are not able to draw anything because the current educational system doesn’t give us many opportunities to use our visual thinking – even if it is an innate form of thinking as a child.

He shared a funny anecdote with us: he was advising Microsoft on a UI type of problem, and to foster the discussion, he showed them some handmade drawings. The people in the room were enthusiastic about this new support for their discussion, and at the end of the meeting some exec went to see Dan and asked him: “what software did you use to make the UI seem as if it is handmade?”.

And I definitely agree with Dan when he says that some software help and stimulate our thinking whereas others (and a lot of them) just block us: as a strategic analyst, I personally thinks about a problem only in terms of “what is it possible to show about it in a PowerPoint?”. I know it sounds kind of pathetic, but it is clear that my brain is now used to think about solutions in terms of slides.

So Dan’s solution (which can of course be summarized in a picture drawn on a napkin as you can see in this article) is to use the swiss knife of visual thinking:

• Use our built-in tools: eyes, mind, hands.
• Use the “look, see, imagine, show” process when approaching a problem, like we would do in poker game (we look at the cards, we see the patterns, we imagine what we could have, whe show our cards).
• When you arrive at the “show” step, use the SQVID framework: try to understand wether you need, for your audience to understand, to make you picture Simple or elaborate, Qualitative or quantitative, to focus on the Vision or the execution, to adopt an Individual or a comparative view, and finally to show your problem as a Delta (change) or as a status quo.
• Match your picture with one of the way we see the world: to answer a What? question, draw a portrait; to answer a How many? question, draw a chart; to answer a Where? question, draw a map, to answer a When? question, draw a timeline, to answer a How? question, draw a flow chart, and finally to answer the Why? question, draw a multidimensional picture, often a combination of the previous questions.

What I also find interesting is his classification of people into 3 categories regarding visual thinking: the black pen guys, who are the ones that can’t help jumping from their chair during a meeting and drawing things everywhere on the white board; the yellow pen guys, who are the ones good at highlighting the important areas in a picture and improving what’s be drawn; and the red pen guys, who hate drawing but who usually think that what the black pen guys are writing is bullshit and feel so exasperated that they end up amending the whole thing. I took Dan’s test and it happens that I fall into the second bucket; and I’m really curious to know where you think you fit the most to see if it confirms the repartition that we had within the eBay audience!

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This post is aimed at helping friends bootstrap projects (although they certainly don’t need me to turn everything into gold, especially these ones). I apologize for the inconvenience caused to readers coming for content, not announcements, but these are 2 AMAZING projects that definitely deserve exposure. Unfortunately, a number of readers won’t be able to be part of the game since #1 is for French companies only, and #2 is for French speakers only. There we go:

1. Sheirin Iravantchi, Aymeril Hoang & Paul Degueuse, three people who have been instrumental in the success of the study trip to Silicon Valley (full quality debriefing in French by Olivier Ezratty here)I organized back in November 2007, are organizing what they call a (French)TechTour between May 19th & May 23rd 2008. The concept is pretty clear and very appealing: a sample of 10 startups will be selected to go to Silicon Valley & meet with corporate development departments of major large corps. Here’s a list of planned meetings (note the diversity of industries considered):
   1. Google David Lawee, VP corporate development
   2. Ebay Erik Stuart, Director, Corporate Strategy
   3. Cisco Didier Moretti, VP Business Incubation, Emerging Technologies Group
   4. Microsoft Beti Cung, Director, Emerging Business Team - I met Beti before, and an hour with her is worth the return trip: super smart girl, if all meetings are planned to be of such quality then becoming a TechTour participant is what you should be desperate working on
   5. HP Damien Henault, Director, Strategy & Corporate Development
   6. AT&T Rupert C. Young, Director, Strategic Business Development
   7. Intel Capital Eghosa Omoigui, Director, Strategic Investments
   8. Symantec Hans van Rietschote, Senior Director, Office of the Chief Technology Officer

Assuming that the agenda speaks for itself, impressive uh?, my bet is that you should take a look at the following links and apply:

(French)TechTour, the blog here; details on the tour here; application file here; the launch post here. Enjoy!

2. Thomas Faivre-Duboz, a former classmate of mine & Raphaël Fétique are 2 very active entrepreneurs in Paris. They run a consultancy aimed at helping website owners with a conversion rate enhancement methodology. The name of their company? Converteo. The good news is that Converto recently launched an Error404 competition: design the most appealing Error 404 page and you’ll win a one week conversion rate optimization audit worth 4000 euros HT (1 million US dollars – just kiddin’, around 6000 USD). I believe this is a great initiative: some Error 404 pages can be such a shame that they might never make you feel like coming back on a site; on the other hand, some display a message like ‘our teams are now aware of the malfunction, thank you for helping us improve our service and sorry for the inconvenience’, a sort of message that may improve user stickiness at the end of the day. Here’s the link to the Error 404 Converteo competition.

Wanna jump on one or the other, or both competitions? Please be their guest. Feel free to keep me posted on the outcome of your applications.

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I consider myself a “power buyer” on Amazon – having ordered and read for the last decade or so between 20 and 30 books every year, for sums of money far from negligible, at least to me.

This being said, I’ve never been more unhappy about my experience as a customer. Here are 5 free pieces of advice from too faithful a customer:

1. The company pretends to invest millions in its customer relationship management systems, but why on Earth Amazon never implemented any Fidelity / membership program? Even the worse companies in the world, customer service-wise (yes you’ve recognized them, I’m talking of airlines), have membership /faithfulness programs. I would be delighted to gain some travel miles or free mp3 as a reward for being a long time customer.
2. Books purchased via the one-click purchase button should be automatically removed from one’s automatic recommendations, wish list & shopping cart. Why would you want to recommend a book already acquired and shipped to the actual same customer in the past? Today, you face a high risk of ordering a book twice because of that.
3. Amazon seems to consider that none can purchase a book anywhere else than on their store. I think users should be granted with the possibility to mark a book as already acquired (somewhere else), either on Amazon (they should make this automatic though, but I’m so desperate…) or elsewhere.
4. Even worse, when these books are already in the shopping cart (or mention “In your shopping cart” already), that is to say between my wallet and Amazon’s and their warehouse and my shelves, Amazon still finds ways to recommend them. Don’t they think I already know the book if it’s included in either my shopping cart or my wishlist?
5. This one is more a back office thing. But aren’t you guys all about dematerializing the bookshopping experience? So why can’t I find ‘.pdf’ed invoices in my “account info” space? I still need to keep these blue bills for ages: I know you legally have to send these, but why don’t you help us get rid of the tons of paper we receive.

And I’m not even mentioning transnational use of Amazon (if you acquire a book on Amazon.com rather than on Amazon.yourcountry login in with the same email address, it’s not removed from your country’s wishlist) or the interface here. Or… let’s mention it before we leave the floor: Amazon’s interface wasn’t so much more convenient back in 1997 or so than it is today. I’m surprised because every engineer from Amazon I’ve met was super bright, but if I were an e-Commerce entrepreneur today I would definitely embrace rich media and video category marketing as a paradigm to set a new user experience standard.

To everyone: as you will have understood, I’m not so happy with my experience as a customer on Amazon. Any alternative?

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That is the question…

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=pr7lDlUfw9w]

Video not available anymore, find it here.

What do you guys think?

via LittleGirl

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I’m exhausted and it’s only half of the study trip, but I enjoy SO MUCH going with a great bunch of cool guys to amazing companies like OQO, Netvibes, City Council of SF, l’Atelier US, eBay, Box.net, SRI, Stanford, Meetro and tomorrow Twitter, Neocase, Microsoft, Google, Plug & Play, the Churchill Club, XOBNI – & the day after Orb Networks, Orange, SAP, PodTech, Bizanga + great VCs like Jean-Louis Gassée, Vincent Worms from Partech, Matt Lecar from Partech, Sven Strohband from MDV & Jeff Clavier from SoftTech VC + Marylène Delbourg-Delphis, who actually recruited Guy Kawasaki out of Apple & François Laugier, a prominent lawyer in Silicon Valley….that I haven’t had the energy to blog recently. At night, after 7 visits during the day, all I think about is collapsing.

We’re only half way and here’s our program (below). I’ll make sure I blog extensively as soon as I find some time – although I’ll have to blog on TechEd in Barcelona first. I’m late, I know.

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 In chess, a gambetto – say it with an Italian accent, consists in sacrificing a piece at the beginning of a game to gain a competitive position on the exchequer – for example through the control of the center of the chessboard or one of the long diagonals.

Getting back to business (we’ll get back to the gambetto later), it is very common to say that the state of an economy is reflected by the strength of its currency when the Euro currency is weak – and hence that the economy of the EU are in poor shape. However, when the Euro gets stronger, companies and officials claim that corporations are constrained in their efforts to export goods and services and that the situation should be reversed or the EU will soon enter an economic turmoil.

I think this is all too easy and bullshit.

God Dollar used to be the only viable currency in international trade, until the Euro came out of nowhere in January 2000 (2001 for actual pocket coins and bills). The European Union is the world’s largest consumer market, and a gateway to the Middle East and Africa for American companies. Although the Dollar still dominates international transactions of goods (slightly) and financial transactions (easily), the Euro has emerged as a tangible alternative considering the political stability of the region.

Consequently, the Euro vs. US Dollar exchange rate has kept growing insanely from 1 EUR = USD 0.85 in mid 2000 (1 EUR = 1.19 USD on January 1st 2000) to 1 EURO = USD 1.47 USD today. Althoug I acknowledge the trickiness of the situation for export businesses, high tech or not, I see very few corporations have implemented hedging strategies or make proper use of forward contracts – which is a shame. Still, instead of lamenting, I believe economic decision makers of both the US and the EU should roll up their sleeves and act in such a way (hell yeah I’m even givin’ lessons now, love blogging…):

For US High Tech companies: go for internationalization. Acquiring hardware, software, telco devices, consumer electronics and services labeled in USD has never been cheaper. So why wait? I’m pretty sure any potential buyer would understand this reasoning. A weak USD is a fantastic opportunity for American exporters to thrive abroad, and win strategic, long-term projects. It doesn’t matter whether the profitability of these projects is low: what matters is to build reputation on new markets, or to highlight your competitive advantage against local players. Remember, the gambetto? Be ready to sacrifice a few cents today (anyways, the dollar rates so low that it’s no big loss whatsoever) to be in the real race when that moment comes.

For European high tech ventures: shop for intellectual property and talents in the US since the Euro has never been so strong against the US Dollar – which will make acquiring quality companies cheap, and build production capability in China and India (or go and get cheap but excellent developers in Eastern Europe, before the Euro comes there, or Israel) to reduce the cost of goods sold, enhance their competitiveness and therefore be ready for a shift during harsher economic times or win back market share on their competitors’ behalf. EU corporations, especially the big ones, find it hard to tear the P&L from the balance sheet and should learn to make better investments. Remember when the VCs said that few large European high tech corporations had a real, sound external growth strategy? Even though making the quarter may seem tough because of a strong Euro, acquiring today technologies that will generate tomorrow’s revenues boils down to ’sacrificing’ a small slice of the pie to weaken the competition, and build a better product offer for tomorrow. Gambetto again.

Now waiting for the Chinese Yuan to offer a third way…

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For those that don’t know, “The Perfect Store” tells the story of eBay, how it was started, who was involved, its community, its growth, and the IPO, basically everything up to around 2001. The book was very well-written, I thought. So much so, that I felt more affinity with the company before it went public than afterwards. For the entrepreneurial section of the book, I was eating the pages up, breathlessly soaking in the stories of many of the people involved—these large number of perspectives included in the book, are one of its strengths. Then, after d-day, the IPO, my sentiments sank. I felt the floor opening up beneath me, all my pioneering instincts gone, given away to the “suits.” But I imagine some people will see it from a different perspective, and that is how well-written “The Perfect Store” is.

Normally, I would review a book in pieces, but since I read the book some 4-5 months ago, I’ll instead try to summarise the key points I got from the book.

Where you are from matters to where you are going: I notice this over and over again. Pierre Omidyar, eBay’s founder, is a Libertarian, which rougly translates to letting people solve their own problems, with as little interference as possible. You can see this play out in eBay’s largely decentralised shopping-model. The lesson here is not, I think, that everyone should be like eBay, but that whatever you do, should in some way reflect what you believe in.

Be professional quickly: I don’t think eBay would be where it was today, if Pierre hadn’t immediately tried to attract talent, starting with Jeff Skoll, an acquaintance and Stanford MBA, all the way up to Meg Whitman, who was instrumental in handling the IPO and is still eBay’s CEO today. Many entrepreneurs are in the game because they want to be independent. Opinions may vary, but a smaller piece of a bigger pie is usually better than a small pie all to yourself.

Venture capital is not just money: eBay was consistently profitable from day one, so they actually didn’t need financing. But there was one important reason for going to a venture capitalist: professionalisation. eBay needed to send a signal to the world, that it was an important player on the market. It needed to attract talent, and form a growth strategy. All of which happened after it took on venture capital.

Community matters: eBay’s key to success was not only her low capital costs (no stock, little overhead), but also her close ties with the users of the site. At the beginning, little in features was introduced on the site without consulting the users first. Because of this and ultimately the high switching costs, eBay benefited from what is known as the Network Effect. That said, as a company grows, community-involvement cannot be as strong, and new mechanisms must be put in place to place to stay in touch with your core-users. eBay had a lot of problems in this area.

IPO’s can be traumatic: Somewhat related to the point about communities and change, when Ebay went public, it created a rift between the core-values of her original workforce and users, and the values of the financial community and the media. There’s not much to say about this, except that just as it takes a particular type of people to start a company, the same applies for people taking a company public, and as a founder (and start-up-employee), you must learn to let go.

Make your IT-infrastructure scaleable: this is the only tech-advice in this post, but Pierre had no idea how quickly eBay would take off, and the company was plagued by technical issues from the start. Only some years later, when Meg Whitman became the new CEO, did proper staff get hired and was the infrastructure upgraded for scale.

That’s about it. I’m sure, I forgot some key-points, and would appreciate comments on this, if you have read the book. I do remember thinking that “The Perfect Store” was the absolute best book I ever read on starting a company, interacting with community and stakeholders, and the effects of an IPO. So, highly recommended for this reason alone, and also to gain a good insight into eBay as a business until 2001-2.

(This review is mirror-posted on my blog.)

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Until now, we have all been happy (and confused) about web 2.0. What is it built on? Ajax, Flash,Silverlight, Air, Php? Is it a platform or is it an app? And, what the hell is it?

Tim O’Reilly has done his best to build upon his original naming of the phenomenon Web 2.0. According to him, Web 2.0 is… well read his paragraph-long definition here, and can be split into following characteristics. To me it still seems very abstract, so let’s discuss the points, one by one.

• First, platform. This means that web-based technology can be used to launch a range new applications, allowing developers to build on top of it and earn money too. This is happening, e.g. Facebook, though monetarily, only in a minority of 2.0 apps.
• Second, data, which means the information created by users and about users, which can be leveraged in applications. Again, happening, though only partially. Users own some data, other data created by them is owned by the site, e.g. Digg.
• Third, participation as a basis for an application. Again happening. eBay has no value without sellers and buyers.
• Fourth, “open source” development. Slowly happening, though there is still no clear business-model and much resistance to it. You could see the blogosphere as a bad example, and Facebook as a good one.
• Fifth, content-based business models. Eh… there’s a lot of content, a lot of noise, very few business models based on it. You could argue that this has been newspapers’ business-model for 100 years and look where they are now.
• Sixth, perpetual development of applications. That means that an application is continuously improving, which is clearly happening across the scale.
• Seventh, software above single devices, the merging of desktop and web, or perhaps leaving behind the desktop all together. So far this has been fairly one-way, from desktop to web. But there are some great examples, particularly in the SAAS-sphere.
• Eight, early adopters. This was perhaps the case in 2004, but I think application-developers are seeing a slow-down as supply is clearly exceeding any possible demand.

The web is fragmented, very much so. We have productivity apps, which can be split into a number of segments, we have the media, we have e-commerce, we have communication, etc. So really, what we are looking at is the evolution of applications, based on various technologies, and which can be segregated into a number of fields: Work 2.0, Media 2.0, Commerce 2.0, and Communication 2.0.

And by separating functions, it becomes easier whether there is true evolution, by which I mean the transition towards a new platform. This, however, also means that it must also be sustainable, an important point to keep in mind.

Work 2.0

What this includes are technological tools which enable humans to increase their productivity. And really, this can again be segmented into fields like word processing 2.0; accounting 2.0; graphics 2.0; etc. The real question is, have we evolved in that domain?

If you look at how people are being productive, the answer is yes and no. Due to the shift of “work” apps from the desktop to the web, you see a number of people shifting their work-area to the web also. However, there is still a barrier between the desktop, which I define as offline-use, and the online web, as there is no ubiquitous internet, nor are there many web-apps which comfortably work on the desktop or other devices either. What we are also seeing is that text-based applications do best in the web-sphere, but anything dependant on CPU or processor-speed (graphics or computation) is still largely restricted to desktop-usage.

Media 2.0

We are clearly seeing a shift here, which started with web-publishing of text, to pictures, to audio, to video. The shift becomes all that much more apparent if you look at the way media 1.0 is dealing with this: Lawsuits and DRM from Hollywood and Record-companies; newspapers shutting down; and many media 1.0 businesses shifting to online business models. And while there clearly is a future for media 2.0, very few “independents” are making any real money from it.

Commerce 2.0

This is clearly the winner, at least in terms of revenue. So much so, that a 3.0 stage is sure to follow soon. It’s not universal, but business models like eBay (which I would define as 2.0) lead to a shift of second-hand goods-trading from off-line to online. Books (Amazon) saw a similar movement. Electronics also. E-commerce as a platform for individuals is doing particularly well.

Where we need an evolution is in terms of interactive goods, i.e. fashion and fresh food, which will require some out of the box thinking, beyond the web-desktop paradigm, but towards the “real world”-web-”real world” paradigm. A great example is the recent announcement of buying songs played in Starbucks through iTunes in real-time; which clearly asks for an expansion to concerts and other environments, as well as similar usage-mechanisms with other types of products.

Communication 2.0

Primarily being designed as a communication platform, the web clearly shines and is growing in this regard. From e-mail to messaging, to voip to video-oip. Facebook is a clear evolution here as well, allowing for a rich environment for people to interact, beyond text, voice, video. Some people would argue Twitter is part of this, I would classify this as rss 3.0 and thus media.

So, can you come up with other segments in which there has been or needs to be an evolutionary leap, and which can be achieved by leveraging the advantages the internet provides?

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I’ve begun to realize how serious the very idea of privacy can be jeopardized because of the web. The web can be a pandora box that may profit malicious folks.

This blog post was triggered by an encounter that I will remember for a long time. Last week, I met, in a semi private, semi professional context, an entrepreneur, someone that shouldn’t have known anything about me but that basically knew everything about me before we even met.

He showed me:

- my CV and professional network through LinkedIn

- who I hang out with through Facebook

- ‘what I’m doing’ through Twitter (although my Twitter has become private since then)

- where I went, how I and my sybils look like through browsing my pictures on Flickr

- my private address thanks to a ‘Whois’-ization of Tech IT Easy

- what I think, how I think, through reading the blog posts I’ve published for 15 months

- what I bought and sold on different eCommerce platforms

- the authors I like, the books I read, the movies I watched, etc. on U.[Lik]

- the videos I published on various VOD platforms

- how I react through all the comments I left on many different blogs

- the articles I read on del.icio.us

…and a lot more public things that I promised I wouldn’t mention here. All I can say is that it was bloody (UK; in US, that would turn out to be ‘fucking’) scary.

The guy actually knew more about me than my own self.

Fortunately, his whole idea was about tackling such identity issues on the World Wide Web. The idea was brilliant, but as I told him: executing and establishing a strong market position will be tough. Anyways, the meeting couldn’t be more eye awakening.

Identity Management on the WWW is a very serious issue, a high stakes poker. I decided to save 2 hours to myself every week to brainstorm alone on this issue: what kind of information am I okay making public, what kind of information that I leave public today should I turn private tomorrow, how do I protect myself and those that I love from intrusions, etc.

This is a very serious issue. Probably one of the top three current challenges the Internet is facing.

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Hey Rupert, what’s your name?

Rupert.

Right. Can you tell us more about you?

As part of the Ziki team I am working as community manager for the English speaking web. My main task is to make Ziki’s innovative features known by the biggest number of people possible and we think that there are still a lot of potentially interested users who have not heard about our services. Ziki was first launched in English before coming out in French and our high growth rates show us that our members appreciate and recommend Ziki more and more each day .

Can I add that you were born in Austria, and that we became good friends in graduate school, @ HEC Paris? So that I cut off arguments of people who’re going to ask for interviews after this blog post. I don’t interview people in general, however I’m ready to podcast developers – entrepreneurs though. Enough said, can I add that we knew each other pretty well before?

Well, you just did.

Thanks Rup. Let’s now get straight to the point: what the heck is Ziki?

Ziki’s main goal is to make our members more visible on the web. To do this, we offer a sophisticated cocktail of sevices to our members which’s ingredients are social networking, people search and feed aggregation. Ziki’s open network and our own unique tagging algorithm will help you to find and get in contact with other members having the same interests as you.

Ziki is also a free way to search for comprehensive information about a person based on published information available on the Web. Our search results will be represented by relevancy and grouped by personal profiles so that when you follow a link you’ll find a personal summary of the researched person if there’s one available.

Ziki also offers a lot of complementary features that help you manage your own online identity. It allows you to concentrate your whole web identity on only one page and, thus, improve your communication about yourself. You may import nearly all your feeds such as posts, photos, videos, comments or your favorite websites to your personal Ziki in order to create some sort of virtual ID card. Ziki is also an OpenID provider

Allright, I think I’m getting it. Pretty nice Internet Software concept. Where is the Ziki idea coming from?

An estimated 30 percent of Internet research relates to people searches. “To Google someone” has become a part of everyday language for most Americans, and with the explosion of social networks and publication platforms (blogs, photo sharing sites, video sharing sites, etc), Internet users have scattered across the Web a mine of personal information. Since this information is searched on a regular basis, there is a need to organize and present it in a structured way. That is what made Olivier Ruffin and Patrick Chassany launch Ziki in April 2006. Today Ziki counts more than 20.000 active members and is available in both English and French.

Man, what you’re telling me is truly, sincerely pretty cool. But you know, I remember having once subscribed to Ziki. I was just curious and then never went back to it again. From what you’re telling me, I guess Ziki has changed a lot. So what’s your pitch to make of me an addicted user of Ziki. In other words, why should one start to use Ziki?

Leaving aside Ziki’s great design and the nice usability of our site, there are a lot of reasons to use Ziki :

Like many internet users you are likely to have signed up to a number of other sites that you visit regularly. Ziki allows you to consolidate all these sites on one and only place. And instead of subscribing to a new feed each time your contact subscribes to a new web service, you may subscribe directly to your contact’s Ziki in order to keep yourself up to date.

Our new internal search engine is a powerful tool that will make you benefit from your networks collective intelligence. Ziki offers you the unique opportunity to become registered for free within Google, Yahoo! and MSN which will make your name appear on the top of the result list whenever anyone searches for your name on these engines.

Bloggers may better understand their audience and increase its size with Ziki. One week ago we launched a new special feature which even allows them to monetize their posts directly on our site by entering their Google Adsense Code.

Finally, companies may find Ziki’s offer attractive as we give them the opportunity to create a personal website as well as a people search tool able to find potential business partners, customers or employees.

Allright, that is convincing. But isn’t the virtual identity market crowded? Who are your competitors?

As Ziki’s services are extremely diversified in order to achieve our target – which is increasing our users’ online visibility – we have a certain number of competitors depending on the market you place us. On the people search market, you can name Spock or Spokeo, concerning online visibility management and feed aggregation and sharing, Naymz is offering also free search engine placement for “Empowering Reputable Professionals”.

To sum it up, Ziki’s approach is unique as we try to combine the highest value services of all these different markets.

What’s Ziki’s competitive advantage vs. this quality competition?

Ziki has developed its own algorithm to collect and organize information relative to a person – starting with information available on the Internet.

The site allows its users to create an official webpage for free (a ziki), on which all personal and relevant information – from a bio and resume to multimedia files and blog posts – can be stored. These official profiles can be tagged and searched through Ziki and other search engines.

Ziki members are guaranteed to appear in the first position of Google, Yahoo & MSN search results when their name is searched, given that Ziki buys sponsored links. Ziki community members can therefore create, manage and optimize their online presence while controlling their image. Through Ziki, members can tag/favorite community members, allowing them to create their own social, personal or professional networks.

How is Ziki financed?

Ziki is entirely financed by private funds.

Seasoned entrepreneur business angels? wealthy private individuals? the founders?

You go and figure out. But it seems you’re getting the picture.

Which technology do you use to make Ziki run?

Ziki is programmed in Ruby on Rails. Olivier, our CTO, has developed all the features you can find on our site today.

How many people in the team?

Beside its founders, Patrick and Olivier, Ziki is composed of a team of about 10 members managed by Jean-Francois Ruiz, who is also blogging on webdeux.info. We are permanently adding new features to Ziki, which we communicate through our blog, and we try to keep in close contact with our members in order to understand perfectly what they are looking for and be as reactive as possible while responding to their needs.

Man, this is great. We need a marketer as a blogger on Tech IT Easy. When are you joining us?

Some day probably. I would really like to. However, I’ve been very busy recently, taking care of the English speaking Ziki community, especially on a Ziki blog here. I prefer to stay focused and avoid blogging everywhere. The development of our web application in the Anglo Saxon world is instrumental to Ziki’s future success and growth globally. My job is strategic and the adventure worth it.

Indeed, staying close to one’s users is one of the keys to success in consumer web and should be your top priority. Thanks for your time Rupert and good luck with the development of the Ziki community in English speaking countries.

People, there’s one crucial question I haven’t asked Rupert. And you have to tell me. In your opinion, how is Ziki going to make money? What’s Ziki’s underlying business model?

Let’s call it the brainstorming of the day.

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It’s an honor for me to introduce as a blogger on Tech IT Easy one of the best photo editing amateurs ever, and a star on the Flickr community: Emmanuel Perez-Duarte. Check his works of Art here. Faithful readers of Tech IT Easy had already read about Emmanuel here in a post dedicated to the e-commerce long tail.

A true geek user, as opposed to geek developer, Manu has always been an early adopter of software related to digital content: photo editing, music, videos; in short, Emmanuel is fond of all sorts of multimedia experiences and software dealing with it.

His favourite? GIMP of course. Emmanuel will try within his next 100 years as a blogger on Tech IT Easy to publish some tutorials about how to use GIMP (see review in French on Olivier Ezratty’s blog here). Manu also enjoys the spirit of the ‘open source community’ and open source software in general: so I’ll be glad to fight a little bit with him when he raises such issues.

Emmanuel also happens to be a very good friend of mine. Until recently, we were listed as ‘married’ on Facebook. But Emmanuel dumped me for unknown reasons.

When he isn’t on his computer, playing the piano, or using his digital camera, Emmanuel is an auditor at Renault, from where he’ll try to bring some industrial-geekiness to Tech IT Easy; before that, he was an economist in Paris @ Exane BNP-Paribas, where he covered Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Latin America – bringing some more geographical expertise here. Emmanuel Perez-Duarte, like a number of bloggers on Tech IT Easy, just graduated from HEC Paris with a Master in Management Science specialized in economics.

We hope he enjoys being part of the adventure and wish him to have fun. Welcome to you Manu! I’m so glad to have you blogging with us.

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I actually learnt what software architecture means something like 9 months – when Jean-Sébastien and Pierre discussed the architecture of CartoReso and I was listening, eyes wide opened not understanding the slightest bit of what was going on. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize how crucial designing a smart and robust architecture is in making the implementation of a software product strategy successful though.

This being said, there’s a number of things one should know when it comes to software architecture design applied to an entrepreneurial context. I acknowledge I’m brand new to this domain, but software architecture has been the one thing I’ve been focusing on in the last 4 months: the sun could rise without me having read at least a few pages on the topic. So, here are my 11 non-technical takeaways. There you go:

1. Think strategy, not technology. Strange? Maybe. The goal of software architecture is to embed you strategy into your product. Keep that in mind. And keep strategic analysis informal: week-long brainstorms between founders will perfectly do. Keeping the strategic analysis informal shouldn’t prevent you from going the extra mile digging deep though. Be tough-as-nails, cold-blooded and if necessary, surround yourself with razor-sharp, nit picky colleagues that will pinpoint what deserves to be pinpointed
2. Think intellectual property, especially if you’re small and weak. You don’t want the big guys to steal from you. Ooosh, I was almost forgetting. See this pizza-and-coke Linux guy in your team unwilling to think of patents as anything else than evil? Yeah, I know, he’s smart, nope, very smart and you don’t want to argue with him. But fight him with words until he understands intellectual property is key in a knowledge warfare industry where some countries (like China) are more equal than others when it comes to IP. The guy’s smart so it will take a lot less time than you expect as of now.
3. Think interface and user experience first, also called Think take your time. Don’t start coding from day one. What you should do is draw the screens of your applications. Each screen. With all the buttons, everything. Think of the human – machine interface first. Paradoxically, the longer you’ll wait, the faster you’ll get it done. Procrastinate. Do actually your best in procrastinating. You’d better walk slow in the right direction than run fast in a dead end. Unfortunately, true geeks can’t help coding. So refrain them from doing so by all means – including, if necessary, use violence and blackmail their families.
4. Think world-class engineers, or don’t think – or even think of thinking ever. Pick up the best – and trust me that’s easier to say than do. One smart develop does the work of ten lame programmers so do it, whatever it takes. And give out stock options, be generous about it: startup developers jump from one failed startup to another. Finding for once a good horse to ride is a rare, unique opportunity to make a home run and stop worrying about money for a while. These guys are the ones who deserve it most.
5. Think division of labour. Software architecture helps you parallelize the work load between developers to make all different groups working on all different parts finish on the same date. Believe me, there’s nothing more beautiful than assembling parts of code processed by different brains, clicking on ‘compile’, and see it run. However, do not believe you can then take a nap: the hardest thing in software isn’t to have a program that compiles properly. I would tend to say the hardest bit lies in packaging your software (never did it so I should just stop here). You’ll come up first with a broad drawing of the different software layers depending on the number of floors of your software (eg data / infrastructure; application; presentation – the SOA trend tends to divide the application layer into two, technical and a functional, subcomponents) – which ease work breakdown structuring. For instance, those with some good taste (or the least bad taste) will deal with the interface, others with the client side, the remaining ones will work on the server side. As an example, in CartoReso, Jean-Sébastien dealt with lower layers hacked in C (he was the most knowledgeable in NMap, the open source brick on which we decided to build on), Pierre with the application engine and with integration / build / project management (since he was in charge of the middle layer) and my humble self with the interface. But a broad drawing isn’t enough. You may then decide to fine tune your architecture and delve into the details of each layer. This work is necessary when dealing with large software development teams: regression risk finds itself lowered when everyone knows what it has to do and each method is clearly owned by a lead someone.
6. Think flexibility. Lay the groundwork for future evolutions: you’re not building a software for today or even tomorrow. Think long term. A fashionable way of implementing flexible architectures is to go for modularity – like Dassault Systems does: you don’t acquire one standard piece of software, you just build your own DS software by picking the modules you need in their catalog. Interestingly enough, Dassault Systems‘ pricing catalog follows the way the architecture was thought, hence creating a perfect alignment between marketing and engineering which I believe is an industry best practice. Why? Well, Dassault Systems happens to fulfill the dream of all software vendors: it sells generic software that matches specific needs.
7. Think lock-in. The new release of Firefox sucks: it crashes thrice a day and every time I try to download something. so I’ve decided to drop it for Safari on my Vista Mac at home and IE7 on my Vista laptop at work. But I find it REALLY hard, as I loved these little del.icio.us taggers or icons to subscribe to RSS readers embedded in the URL bar. Firefox has achieved to lock me in (well, not quite, but so far it did): the number of available plug ins prevent me from dropping Firefox until I find a solution (FYI, there exists IE7 plugins on windowsmarketplace.com). Lock-in has long been the one major issue with Google: it is now solved since Google login eases access to other Google web applications via Ajax menus. The powerful lock-in strategy execution usually reflects the value of the underlying platform – and the value of a platform equals the value of its ecosystem.
8. Think proprietary control of a widespread standard Look at Adobe Acrobat’s .pdf format, or Microsoft Office applications (used to be .doc, .ppt and .xls, and now, with Open XML, it’s .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx). Once you’ve set the standard, the value of your software increases dramatically because it takes long for an installed base to migrate to a new standard. This simple phenomenon is called inertia. The hardest bit here is to become the standard. Which can be achievved running faster than everyone and remain in stealth mode (invisible from the big ones) as long as possible. Easier said than done.
9. Think competition. Don’t mess with large corporations. If they are after you before you’ve proved your architecture is hard to replicate, they’ll make an announcement stating they’re soon to release a similar software, which will slower sales for your software, and come up, probably a little late, with something similar and sell at a loss, which will inevitably kill you. If your architecture is strong, elegant and patented, then the big one will realize it costs a lot to replicate (developers, patent breaking risk, time frame, etc.) and will think of acquiring either you or one of your competitors. This is how big corporations now innovate and trust me, software architecture audits aren’t piece of cake. Should they choose to acquire a serious competitor, sell your company before you get to die. Indeed, once the big one has the same product as you do and i) you’re alone, independent and weak; ii) you haven’t set the standard yet, the usual path followed to reap you off the map is that it will sell a similar product to yours for cheap, probably at a loss, if not for free – and the only thing you can do to compete is do the same too. Right? But think twice: your software product is your only cash cow whilst the big one on the other side of the river generates revenues from a large product portfolio. You’ll henceforth die before your large competitor does, no matter how much money you’ve raised.
10. Think first things first: your project needs an architecture too. “Right” order is: 0) idea + slideware demo 1) quirky demo for funding + recruitment purpose that you’ll throw away as soon as you’ll get seed funding + recruitment + strategic analysis 2) seed funding (angels) + software architecture 3) functional specs + user interface design + feasibility + technical requirements + development schedule 4) prototype started all over again from scratch 5) series A + refined proto + then start the marketing machine (road map, channel, trade shows, PR, buzz, and all that jazz), hand it to the CEO and prepare for release crunch time: documentation, support, help, manufacturing, shipping, etc.. Don’t worry though, things never happen as such. Expect the unexpected: the story never ends up as planned in the scenario.
11. Think interoperability: since you can choose, choose the most appealing role of the play: the white knight. In order to play White Knight, you need to look like a honest broker, even though you’re not. Think of Firefox’s ‘we’re gonna free the web from Microsoft’-approach: they run on all major platforms, support a massive number of external applications (like iGraal) as a platform, is translated in a number of languages by a community, etc. and at the end of the day, Mozilla makes 60 million dollars per year, whilst Google makes much, much more (Mozilla runs Google as a default search engine), and locks you in with little apps like del.icio.us tagger. So, to recapitulate Mozilla Firefox’s set of best practices (I should say right here that Microsoft is very good to at implementing such strategies, I can answer questions on this if you like), your product should be multi platform (start with Windows (90% installed base is convincing enough), then move to Mac OS, then move to Linux), be multi language-ready (it’s not so complicated to support Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Russian unless you think about it afterwards, and then it’s a nightmare), and opened to external developers through a game of APIs: it will generate a buzz, make your company look sexier and hence ease new hires, and last but not least create value on your software by developing what you don’t have time to develop yourself. If you can use freeware code, do it; if you can purchase code for flat fees, do it; don’t pay flat royalties for source code down (eg US$ 15 per product sold), go for pay-per-deployment revenue % royalties instead – ie 1% of unit price; too risky. Make sure you don’t start depending on a partner though: don’t get locked-in yourself. At the end of the day, a good interoperability execution of strategy will strengthen your bargaining position with potential partners who will then realize you have the ability to choose to support them, or not. And then you’re the one calling the shots.
12. Think robustness. Like Criteo, software with crème-de-la-crème architectures never break because of the load (the post, in French, I’m pointing to basically says their full .NET software resisted torture)

Expect a bunch of technical takeaways this time as soon as I feel ready for it.

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Mmm, the title of this post is teasing enough that I guess it’s going to attract quite a crowd. Anyways, here’s the answer: a sine qua non condition to be acquired by EBAY, MSFT or GOOG is basically to at least meet with them. Correct?

If you realize the answer to this question is “yes”, then you’ll probably find yourself interested in meeting with Corporate Development Vice-Presidents of all 3 corporations. Aymeril Hoang, ICT Director @ French Embassy in the Bay Area is organizing such a business trip, a unique opportunity to build a network that will facilitate your exit strategy at some point. More info about here. Nota Bene: French Web 2.0 startups only, sorry about that

PS: Aymeril and his team are instrumental in the success of another Bay Area study trip of which I’m an organizer, which will take place slightly later (more about it soon). Actually, we have even built a partnership with the French Embassy to ensure we will get the very best visits and lecturers.

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Some people manage to analyse and remember information by writing, hearing or visualizing it. I am definitely part of the latest type.

This is why I am really interested in tools appearing on the web to visualize some experiences like shopping, search and social networking.

Some of these tools serve a practical purpose whereas others focus more on the artistic experience, but the frontier between the two interpretations seem to become more and more irrelevant.

I have made a quick selection of some tools I discovered on the net for different uses:

1) Shopping: it is proven (don’t remember the source but it is quite obvious) that starting a product search with images improve conversion rate. I can personally confirm this assessment as I buy more books on when I use Blackdogair (visual tree of Amazon’s recommendations) than when I simply go on Amazon as I rapidly get lost trying to explore every combination. For lifestyle products, Browsegoods totally stimulates impulse purchase: if you’re a woman and click on the “shoes” category, the vision of thousands of great shoes will definitely drives you crazier than traditional browsing putting in evidence prices rather than images!

2) Search: visualization of search results can cater to some unconscious users’ expectations. For example knowing how many search engines references this result, knowing at first sight if the result is a picture, a video or text, understanding how the different results are linked to each other. This is exactly what Touchgraph offers by clustering results and clearly indicating sources and connections. I also heard that SearchCrystal isn’t bad (even if I haven’t tried it) notably because it shows with different shapes results appearing in different numbers of search engines, as a proxy of relevance.

3) Social networking: this field is probably the one where visualization tools are the most artistically involved, which may lead to think that these visual representations are just “gadgets”, like for example the Facebook Friends Wheel. But, apart from artistic projects, some of them are more useful, to visualize the structure of your network: how people are connected, what are the “clusters” in your network for example. Again, Touchgraph provides a great and customizable tool to do that (the image in this article is the visual representation of the core of my network), including the links between people thought pictures’ tags.

Understanding networks (being recommendations, search results or communities) has always involved visual representation (essentially with basic lines and points), so this is not surprising to feel familiar with these tools. Jérémy always tells me that a great chart is worth thousand words, so he should agree with this article

Fidji SIMO is a co-author on Tech IT Easy, who preferred looking at images than reading text when she was young; it might have left marks! You can find out more about her on this blog’s initial announcement or her blog.

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