Digital Dreamer

Sorry Tumblr- but I wrote something on Medium :) 

https://medium.com/@kunaltandon/opportunity-in-the-shifts-4fa81f927cde#.lg061wntp

I’m also writing more informally on Quip.

As the battle for top content creators to produce, and share the best work on a specific service continues to grow increasingly competitive, It wouldn’t be surprising to see these companies finally build native Patreon like functionality right on top of their existing services. The web is a better place when creators can focus on making the best stuff, and we the fans can easily pay for it. If you make it easier for people to pay for content, they will actually start supporting it with real money, rather than sitting through today’s prevalent interruptive, and irrelevant advertising. It will be exciting to see if emerging technologies like Bitcoin, Apple Pay, and others can help accelerate the reality of this vision.

There has arguably never been a greater time to be a content creator, and definitely never a better time to be a content consumer. Content consumers have endless options when searching for something to entertain, educate, or distract them. Whether it be blog posts, YouTube videos, Vine clips, Twitter commentators, on the ground citizen journalists streaming via Periscope, or independent filmmakers, technology has made it possible for creators to create content more easily than ever before, while being able to connect with audiences quicker, cheaper, and on a larger scale than had ever been possible before either. But like much of the history of the internet, properly compensating these creators still has a long way to go. Advertising revenue is not sufficient.

With the big players- Facebook, Google, and Twitter battling one another to capture talent for their services, while simultaneously competing with emerging services like Snapchat and Medium, and SoundCloud it’s worth exploring the idea of building native capabilities for users to financially support their favorite content creators. It’s increasingly becoming commonplace to see makers insert links to Patreon with their content, encouraging people to support the work financially, but this process still has too much friction, and requires users to exit the environment they are currently having an experience inside. If you’re a service that wants to attract, and retain the best talent, it should be a top priority to build services that allow them to continue producing great work.

Anyone who has been following this year’s presidential election on cable news might have had the same thought I’ve been having...we should be able to do better than this. The target of my scorn is CNN, which once upon a time used to operate as a legitimate news network that served to inform, and educate viewers. Now it just panders to our worst inclinations, and incites fear through non-stop sensationalist news coverage.

CNN’s shift in strategy over the years is likely explained by a shift in how people watch television, and consume news. Requiring a news network to be on 24/7 makes it susceptible to put in filler programming. Simply reporting on a story, sharing the facts, presenting several relevant experts does not require an entire twenty-four hours. Viewers’ attention spans have also shrunk, while the number of other outlets, and mediums to acquire news from has rapidly grown. In a battle for the scarcest resource, attention- sensationalism presents itself as a viable strategy. CNN is a business, it has advertisers to satisfy.  As viewership on television continues to be fragmented, and in an increasing number of cases lost completely to the internet, it’s understandable that a network would resort to sensationalist coverage in order to remain relevant. Under its current structure CNN wouldn't be incentivized to do anything differently, so perhaps it’s time to examine what a news network could look like in the digital age.

If i were building a news organization for today’s world, I would approach it like a startup. How can I begin to make the most impact without investing hundreds of millions of dollars from the start? A lot of the tools a next generation news network would have to leverage are already in place today. Here is my plan, and I’d love to hear from others on what else we could do:

1) Make the consumption experience amazing on mobile devices. There is no doubt that there has been a shift towards mobile. People should be able to tune in, get informed, and tune out all while on the go.

2) Allow a lot of the reporting to be crowdfunded. Beacon is already doing this with a journalism crowdfunding platform. Let reporters pitch the stories they think are important, and let people who want to learn more back the work financially. They will then be subscribing to a specific story, rather than to an entire publication. Also, allow readers to pitch stories they want to see, and also back those financially. Allow reporters to then take those projects on. Marketplace approach.

3) Allow your viewers/readers/users to build profiles- learn what they are interested in, and what is relevant to them. Push curated original reporting to them. The news should work to inform, so help people learn about what is going on in the world, in addition to keeping them updated on what they are most interested in.

4) There are freelance journalists all over the world, build a network, and leverage it. If a story is breaking out in Nepal, tap into the network, assign stories to local journalists, and supplement the expenses through crowdfunding. You get the benefit of on the ground familiarity, and expertise, combined with the fact that you have a reporter who can continue reporting on a story long after the initial hype is gone.

5) Generate revenue in traditional ways like ads, and user subscriptions, but also innovate, and allow customers to subscribe to single stories, and follow them. This was possible in the now defunct news app Circa. If I’m interested in the Chipotle food safety story, allow me to keep receiving updates as the story continues to develop.

6) Effectively leverage all social channels for distribution. Promote citizen journalists that are periscoping from the scene. Put together a day in review Snapchat story for different regions. Have a news program broadcast directly on Facebook Live. Get creative. Find your audience where they are already spending their valuable free time.

There are so many new tools, and services available today that should allow people who want to report real news in a way that serves to inform, and educate the ability to do so, and to do it well, without the onerous capital structure that would’ve been required even ten years ago. We deserve better than CNN, and our other cable news options, and I hope someone takes on the challenge to bring it to us. I’ll be watching, and waiting...hopefully not too long though.

Apple has a tremendous distribution advantage, but it also has a less than stellar record when it comes to building robust software services. The company’s thinking needs to evolve, because ceding messaging, the primary communication tool of smartphones to another company is likely a decision that the team in Cupertino will look back on with regret.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to assume that most people would acknowledge that our smartphones have earned a different name. For many people, especially younger people, the phone is no longer the primary way they communicate with others. The communication method that has flourished with the rise of smartphones has been messaging. It should come as no surprise that text based messaging really took off once an increasing number of people were using devices equipped with full keyboards.

For many of us, Blackberry Messenger (BBM) felt like the first service that moved beyond basic text messaging. You had a buddy list of contacts, the ability to have nicknames, send messages not tied to SMS limits, and the magical ability to see when your messages had been received, and read. It might sound simple today, but BBM was a beloved messaging service. Anecdotally, BBM was the sole reason many of my friends stayed with Blackberries long after it was clear that the iPhone was a far superior device.

In 2011, as Blackberry was continuing to lose users switching to the iPhone, Apple announced iMessage. Former Blackberry users, and lovers of BBM were thrilled. We imagined a BBM like messaging platform, one that would be improved on a superior device, and enhanced by a thriving developer ecosystem. As I sit here writing this in 2016, there is still so much more that I want from the iMessage experience. Apple can do so much more, and with formidable competitors forming in the messaging space, Apple really should do more.

Think about all the amazing applications we have on our phones. Maps, payments, photos, calendars, music, and so much more. Yet the ecosystem that has helped facilitate all of these innovations, still has a messaging app that looks almost the same as it did when it was announced in 2011. Apple only has to look to Asia’s messaging services to see that iMessage can be so much more. It can be a platform that other businesses are built upon, and that it can continue to profit from like it does from the App Store. In fact, Apple can look right in its own backyard, to Facebook, and the work that David Marcus is doing with the Messenger team. Facebook is building Messenger into an incredibly powerful global platform, one that millions of people will access from their iPhone, a device that has iMessage preinstalled as the default messaging service. It’s hard not think that Apple is blowing a tremendous opportunity by keeping iMessage closed, while also failing to innovate on it itself.

There is no new technology that I am more excited about than self-driving cars. The dream of self-driving cars has probably been around since cars themselves. But only in recent years does it feel like the dream will become a reality in many of our own lifetimes. Self-driving cars will be so incredibly transformative, that it is impossible to even predict all the ways they will change our lives, and the world around us.

I selfishly want this technology to get here as soon as possible. There are many companies that are working to bring self-driving technology to fruition. Google, Uber, Tesla, Apple, GM (Cruise acquisition), and many of the traditional car makers, along with some startups are all researching, developing, and iterating on bringing self-driving technology into vehicles. It’s encouraging to see so many companies pursue the future of transportation through varied approaches, but I can’t help but think it would be better for the world as a whole if this endeavor was open-sourced.

Open-sourcing autonomous vehicle will never happen due to competing business interests, but let’s just push that aside, and think of the benefits of pursuing this as a public good.

We would get to a driverless-car future faster. Sharing information, refining approaches, and learning from one another’s work up until this point would only help to accelerate arriving at a real-world ready solution. Think of how many lives we could start saving, and inefficient vehicles we can start taking off the road even sooner!

By collaborating to build the technology, all the players can work together to develop industry standards. All the cars, regardless of maker should be able to communicate with one another. Communication is key among humans, and it will also be crucial among autonomous vehicles. Standardization can also be helpful when thinking about charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. I fear we might be heading towards proprietary charging networks, which isn’t good for the users, or for efficient use of space.

Deployment of new technology across the ecosystem. For consumers it’s a good thing if there are multiple options when choosing whom to buy from, or whom access a self-driving vehicle from. Competition is a good thing, and it will help keep down prices. It’s important that self-driving vehicles (or at least access to them on-demand) be available at affordable prices, because they will work best with fewer traditional cars on the road.

I know it’s just a dream that all these companies will share their research, and work together to bring the best version of this technology to the world sooner, but it’s worth thinking about, and at the very least starting a dialogue. Many researchers say all the lives that will be saved by self-driving cars will be one of the greatest public-health achievements of all time, so shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to bring the technology to the world sooner? Tesla is in the habit of open sourcing a lot of their work to encourage other car companies to make the shift to electric, because the company’s ultimate mission is to make sustainable transport. Maybe Elon will think about doing the same with autonomous driving technology. Here’s to hoping!

I believe that the strongest, and ultimately most successful CEOs are the ones who can communicate the vision/values of a company effectively, and tell the story of the company authentically. Founders are better positioned than anyone to carry out this task.

With all the buzz around the new Steve Jobs biography, I was excited to go back, and watch this video of Jobs’ time away from Apple, when he was reshaping himself as a leader while building NeXT. There are so many nuggets of wisdom in here.

Alex Iskold wrote a thought provoking post on how the future of search was going to look very different than what Google offers today (please go read it, I'll wait here). As we increasingly move towards mobile search, it is safe to assume that the paradigms of web search will have to evolve for an increasingly mobile first, and mobile only world. Alex argues that the future of search will emerge through text, providing you with less results to arrive at an answer, and be indistinguishable from conversation with a real person on the end.

It is interesting to think about how advances in AI could reshape how we interact with our devices to access the unending amount of information out there, but I’m not sure if it will play out the way exactly the way Alex describes. That is the fun part of technology, we’re not sure what shape the future will take, but we do have the opportunity to try and shape it ourselves.

AI would need to improve exponentially to effectively deliver the kind of search at scale that Alex discusses in his post. It would have to successfully deal with nuance, be adaptive, and  possess tremendous anticipatory capabilities. Think about how you search today, and all the things that happen in your head as you parse through that set of initial links you’re shown, or how you refine your search to be more specific, or change your search entirely when you see that you’re not even close to arriving at the answer you wanted. What seems simple, and second nature to us as humans interacting with powerful technology on a daily basis, is often taken for granted. A lot of work will have to go into making machines behave, and think like humans when trying to carry out seemingly simple tasks for us. I think we’re still in the early innings, but I do agree with Alex, that search will look fundamentally different in the future as it becomes increasingly optimized for mobile, and leverages emerging advances in technology.

Google is probably one of, if not the best positioned player to help build the future of what a different search experience will look like on mobile, and it is in their best interest to do so, or risk serious disruption to their corse business. Creating a great search experience on mobile, that feels intuitive, easy, and accurate might also help Google maintain its position as the starting point for many on the Internet, as it faces increasingly stiff competition from the rise of apps. Searching for a physical product? Amazon. Searching for a restaurant or service provider? Yelp. Searching for a flight? Kayak. The list goes on.

As the burgeoning app ecosystem begins to disintermediate Google search, Google’s best hope for the future is to provide a magical experience for it’s users. Maybe it’s one where it feels like you’re talking to a friend...that just happens to be a machine?

When Satya Nadella took the reins from Steve Ballmer to become CEO of Microsoft, the entire technology world went into wait and see mode to see what, if any changes, one of the most important companies in the world would make. Microsoft is still an important part of the computing landscape around the world, but has increasingly been becoming irrelevant as it continued to fail to make the transition towards an increasingly mobile, and connected world. Enough time has passed, where we can safely declare that Satya Nadella is determined to do things differently, and bring Microsoft into the present, and set it up to be successful again in the future.

Under Nadella’s leadership, MS has open sourced .net, offered Microsoft Office for free on iOS devices, and has made some acquisitions that it hopes to quickly turn into it’s own products to put in the hands of users. MS acquired Acompli for $200 million, and many people would say it is now the best email application available for the iPhone. MS also acquired HockeyApp, an app that allows developers to see when an app crashes. Most recently, MS acquired Sunrise, a well designed calendar app- that sits on my homescreen. Nadella seems to have realized that not everyone is on a Microsoft powered device anymore, but that it is still important for users to be able to use Microsoft products everyday.

Acquiring, successfully integrating, and re-introducing products to the mobile world could be a very effective strategy for Microsoft going forward. A fun exercise is to think which other companies would be worthwhile for Microsoft to pursue through M&A.

Here are some of my ideas for Satya Nadella’s shopping list: I obviously have no idea if MS is interested in these companies, or if these companies even want to sell- just a fun thought experiment.

1) Foursquare: Foursquare’s location database already helps power many applications’ location services. The team has also built a rich recommendation engine based on years of check in data. Foursquare also offers a content play, that can serve as an alternative to Yelp listings. This could help Microsoft make a powerplay in local search, and improve its Bing Maps offering.

2) Dropbox: Consumer cloud storage is at a race to the bottom, and will quickly move to zero. MS can afford to offer the service for little to nothing, and simultaneously get a foothold on every mobile OS. Dropbox’s Carousel can also be improved upon, to become a great photo storage solution on mobile and PC for all users.

3) Wunderlist/Todoist: We all have a list to-dos. Increasingly many of us are creating, editing, and storing these on our phones. People interact with these lists, and the apps they use to maintain them daily- MS should get into this space, and link it with other services of its own on the device.

4) Slack: In many ways this makes the most sense for MS to acquire. Slack has been rapidly growing in the enterprise space, where MS has been dominant for many years- and is beginning to make a push into the consumer space, where MS hopes to become increasingly relevant once again.

The technology world is better when its most powerful companies, like Microsoft are focused on innovating, and building for the future- I look forward to seeing what additional changes the company will make under Satya Nadella.

“The fact that all of the initial inner circle- Gibbs, Ax, and me- had done presidential politics in 2004 (for three different candidate) was incredibly important for how we viewed the conventional wisdom about 2008- and was another huge advantage over the Clinton campaign. Few of her inner circle had been involved in the 2004 Democratic primaries. Ax and I had seen improbable outsiders win congressional primaries and races in 2006 while we were working closely with Rahm Emanuel and the DCCC on the effort to win back the house while in 2005 Gibbs was traveling with Obama, seeing a startling passionate reaction him in very unlikely places all across the country. Of course, most important, Obama was absorbing these lessons as well. All four of us were in right spots to see a new potential out there to match the changing mood of the electorate and new technological advances that could help us build a campaign to tap into the winds of change. Many of these lessons ran counter to conventional wisdom about how to run for president, so it was a good first test to see if we could ignore the evidence before our eyes, trust our gut, and start with a clean sheet of paper, not try to rerun the campaigns of the past.”

David Plouffe (Barack Obama's 2008 Campaign Manager)- The Audacity to Win

This excerpt from David Plouffe's book on the 2008 presidential campaign really stood out to me. It reminded me how some investors speak about investing in founders who have a secret, and can build upon that unfair advantage. Obama's inner circle in the campaign happened to bring a very unique background, one that perfectly positioned them to see a few years into the future, and bet on the emergence of various technological trends. We all know that Barack Obama ended up being elected in 2008, and it was directly a result of many of the innovative online strategies introduced by his team. 

I recommend Plouffe's book. It is a fascinating inside look into a presidential campaign, and even provides some insights now when we look back, as to why he was recently hired to be the Senior VP of Strategy at Uber.

Startups seem to be everywhere these days. Your Uber driver is looking for a technical cofounder to help him build his app. Your friend who worked in finance is hoping to get a corp dev role at Dropbox. The engineer and her designer friend are both ready to leave Facebook to work full time on their side project. Everyone wants to raise a seed round.

Not long ago it was believed by many people that in order to successfully build a technology company, that you had to move to the Bay Area. There are still some people who believe the Bay Area is the best place to start a company, but even those people would have to concede that it is not the only place to start a company.

In the United States, and around the world we are seeing vibrant, and burgeoning startup communities popping up everywhere. Boulder, Austin, NYC, Seattle, LA, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Berlin, London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Tallinn, Budapest, Kenya, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Tokyo, Beijing, Manila, and the list goes on and on. Innovation, technology, and the desire to build something that doesn’t exist in the world cannot be confined by geographic boundaries. Access to information has never been easier, and the ability to connect with people all around the globe so easily, and inexpensively has never before been possible. The cost of starting a company has gone down dramatically, so it is logical that people would venture out to start companies of their own.

When people tout the Bay Area as the only place, or at the very least the best place to start a company, they point to the fact that so many successful companies have began there, that there are deep networks/relationships, along with tremendous access to both talent, and capital. All of these things are true- but quickly changing, because it is not sustainable, or practical for every company to start in the Bay Area. We have to start building rich entrepreneurial communities all over the world. Entrepreneurs who leverage technology to redefine old industries, and create new ones are going to be the main drivers of growth for the next century. The story of a relatively small group of people, tackling hard problems is going to be the defining story of our generation, so we need to invest in building the best infrastructure to support these people now.

I believe that entrepreneurship is happening everywhere, and in order to give communities  the best chance to survive, and thrive- it will take a concerted effort to nurture talent, an investment of time and money, combined with a commitment to teaching, and mentorship. It is because of this belief that the work that Techstars is doing feels really impactful to me.

Techstars is an accelerator that runs programs around the world (in many of the cities I listed above) for 3 months at a time- providing companies with capital, a space to work out of, mentorship, and most importantly access to a network/community of people who can help the companies as they navigate the complex journey of building a business. The power of the network is that when you ask a question, someone who has probably been through something similar not to long ago can provide you with some guidance.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to volunteer during Techstars NYC Demo Day at Webster Hall- it was incredible to see the culmination of months of hard work put in by the companies, their mentors, and the Techstars staff,. It was easy to see how much everyone genuinely cared about seeing one another succeed. Beyond potential investors, much of the crowd was composed of mentors who had been working with the company throughout the program, friends, family, and ex-colleagues. Techstars is driven by the idea of community, and it was on full display that afternoon.

More recently, Techstars has teamed up with companies such as: Barclays, Disney, Nike, Kaplan, and R/GA, and many others to run vertical focused accelerators. It is encouraging to see some of the world’s biggest companies recognize that the next big breakthroughs could emerge from a small group of friends who have just started to transform their idea into something tangible.

In the early stages of building any community it is often difficult to get people together to buy into the idea of helping one another, working towards shared goals, and dedicating one’s time to something that might not benefit you right away. It has been great to see how Techstars has been bringing together, and enriching startups communities around the world with their accelerator model, that is focused on the #GiveFirst motto. Entrepreneurship is happening everywhere, and we might just see more of it, happening faster (see what I did there? haha) if Techstars is there to help.

I’m excited to announce a new experiment I’m launching for 2015. In The Know is a daily newsletter (Monday-Friday) where I will be sharing seven links to interesting articles, apps, projects, and whatever else from around the web. Currently there is so much great content being created, it is inevitable that we will miss some of it. This is just my small attempt to highlight a few of the things that I enjoyed reading, watching, and listening to…and I hope you might enjoy too. The first issue went out today. You should subscribe. Happy reading!

We are living in a time when gatekeepers are increasingly losing control, and importance. With platforms like Kickstarter, Medium, Twitter, Gumroad, Instagram, and Facebook it has never been easier for an individual to build an audience, and communicate directly with that audience. A musician can fund an album on Kickstarter, write about the process on Medium, share updates on Twitter, share images of the process on Instagram, sell the album directly to fans using Gumroad, and allow fans to share your work with their friends on Facebook. The scenario I just laid out is not common today, but it is possible, we could not have said that even five years ago. We are in the early innings, but the game is changing.

When ESPN foolishly suspended Bill Simmons, the Editor-in-Chief of Grantland, for speaking out against Roger Goodell, and the NFL, the web was naturally quick to react. Many felt that this provided Simmons the perfect opportunity to seriously consider leaving ESPN, the company that has made him a star, to venture out on his own. A decade ago it would have been crazy to think someone would leave the most powerful, and accessible platform in their industry, but today the rules have changed, and there are new possibilities for talented individuals.

Simmons has almost three million Twitter followers, close to sixty-five thousand Instagram followers, and over half a million Facebook followers. These are not people who are following ESPN or Grantland, rather these are people who specifically care about what Bill Simmons has to say. In an environment that is hungry for good content, Simmons could easily get financing to build out a new media company, one that fits his vision, and it is clear that his loyal fans would follow. Sure, like any entrepreneur, Simmons would be giving up his relatively secure, and extremely lucrative deal at ESPN to build something from scratch, but if he was ever going to do it, it seems now would be the time. He has had three weeks away from ESPN to contemplate if it is really the best place for him to be anymore.

The new technology platforms that allow creators to communicate directly with their fans, have empowered creators in a way that was never possible before. Employers need to be aware of this shift in the dynamics of the relationship. Creators with large, passionate followings have more freedom, and flexibility today, thus have more leverage when making demands. The threat of walking, and going to do something on your own now carries a lot more weight. The personal brand is more important today, because it has the ability to scale, and really make an impact.

I hope Simmons leaves to start his own venture, and I hope he is successful. He did the right thing by speaking out against Roger Goodell, and the NFL. He now has the ability to build an organization where people can feel free to speak out against hypocrisy, without having to fear the repercussions from higher up. All eyes will be on Simmons as he heads into a contract year. I personally hope he says goodbye to ESPN, and changes the game.