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Why does ChicagoRuby appeal to the developer community? One reason: The group strives to learn from past mistakes.
WisdomGroup assumed a leadership role within ChicagoRuby about a month after we became involved. We are grateful for the trust that the community has placed in us. Today I was reminded of a time when we almost lost that trust.
Restrictive Guidelines
A member of our community approached me with some legitimate concerns about ChicagoRuby’s speaker guidelines. Could the guidelines be too restrictive? Maybe. In order to answer that, we have to look at some history.
A Bad Meeting
The speaker guidelines were written after an especially terrible ChicagoRuby meeting in 2010. I chose the speaker that evening, so the meeting was my fault. Essentially, the presenter came in and pitched a Ruby code generator that runs on Windows. The audience was not pleased.
Recovery and Learning
After the meeting, one of our organizers, Dave Giunta, wrote the first version of the speaker guidelines. Dave is no longer a ChicagoRuby organizer, but his document lives on. We’ve only made minor changes to Dave’s original document in the two years since he wrote it.
Building Trust
The guidelines are critical because they help us to build trust within the community. This is especially true of guideline #3: Attend some of our meetings prior to presenting.
How do the guidelines build trust?
Developers trust us to deliver top-notch events full of useful information.
We want our presenters to do well. Presenters do better when they undersand the audience.
The best way for presenters to understand our audience is to attend a few ChicagoRuby meetings and talk to our members.
Filters Are Good
Yes, the guidelines serve as a filter. Certain types of presenters will never approach ChicagoRuby. Others will depart when we email them a link to the guidelines. And the best presenters, the ones who make it through, will have the time of their lives.
The result: A growing, thriving Ruby community in Chicago. A place where smart people can challenge each other to grow so great things can happen.
Note: Groupon sponsors WindyCityGo and other events created by WisdomGroup.
In 2009 people wondered What does Groupon do? Today pundits are asking “Is Groupon’s business model sustainable?” The future is unknown. However, Groupon is certainly positioned to pounce on opportunities as they unfold.
60 Minutes at Groupon
Journalist Leslie Stahl interviews titans. Sergey Brin of Google. Mark Zukerberg of Facebook. Paul Allen of Microsoft. This week 60 Minutes aired Stahl’s interview of Groupon’s CEO, Andrew Mason. Here’s a 4-minute clip:
Is Groupon’s Business Model Sustainable?
So far the model works. Local businesses get a sudden surge of new customers. If the customers are happy, they return.
Over time, entrepreneurs who noticed Groupon’s success launched competing companies. Will the competitors eat Groupon’s lunch?
They might. But that only becomes a problem if Groupon stands still.
Competition is Good
Successful pioneers attract competitors. Personally I believe that competition yields several benefits, among them:
Excellence. Competition drives all of us to achieve more. When I was a competitive swimmer, my teammates and I always achieved faster times against our tougher rivals. Maybe it was the adrenaline.
Market legitimacy. Some customers prefer to follow the crowd. When they see multiple companies offering similar services, they begin to view the service as “legitimate”. And then they buy.
The shopping cluster effect. Why do restaurants cluster together in city neighborhoods? Zoning might play a role. In fact, restaurants have learned that when people want to eat, they don’t necessarily know what they want until they get close to their destination. It makes more sense to drive toward a cluster of restaurants because you’ll have more choices once you arrive. When restaurants locate near other restaurants, they all win, even though they may be competitors.
In summary, competition creates more opportunities for all players in the game.
What If Groupon’s Model Fails?
A failed business model means that the company needs to find a new way to make money. Steve Blank’s book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, shows how a company can pivot through several business models before achieving success. To pivot successfully, a company must:
Listen to customers, so that they know which parts of their model to modify.
Build a team of smart & capable people so that they can implement the new model quickly and effectively.
Groupon’s rapid growth in three short years shows that they know how to listen to customers. As far as the team is concerned, Groupon attracts some of the sharpest software developers around. Their acquisition of Obtiva was a big move in the team-building department.
Groupon has a strong team. If a pivot becomes necessary, they’re well equipped to handle it.
Positioned to Win
Overall it appears that Groupon (and their hometown, Chicago) will do well over time:
If the Groupon model proves successful over time, they will make money and grow.
If their model fails, they have the right team on board for a successful pivot.
I look forward to watching Groupon as they continue to grow.
August 24, 2011 – By Raymond T. Hightower | Comments Off
Ruby on Rails is the technology behind robust web ventures like Groupon, Twitter, and Hulu. WindyCityRails is Chicago’s conference for all who are passionate about Ruby on Rails. The conference will be held on Saturday, September 17, 2011 at the Westin Chicago River North located along the River at Dearborn Street.
What is the WindyCity Experience?
What can you expect at WindyCityRails? Take a look at feedback we received on two conferences held earlier in 2011: WindyCityGo (mobile) and WindyCityDB (NoSQL databases).
Why do we go to conferences?
Presentations. To hear from peers who are working on the cutting edge of our profession. Presentations from this year’s WindyCityGo and WindyCityDB are online.
Networking. To share ideas with our peers – some of the sharpest minds in the developer community. To talk to folks that we don’t see every day. To give serendipity a chance to work!
Fun. After all, if we’re not having fun, maybe we should go somewhere else :-)
What does the WindyCity experience mean to you? Hear more about the experience from people who have been there.
When smart people challenge each other to grow, great things happen. We look forward to seeing you at WindyCityRails!
Nine out of ten startups fail in the first year. Why? More important, what can we do to improve the odds? Entrepreneur Steve Blank might have an answer, expressed in his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Key points from the book are summarized here.
Ignite Chicago
This presentation was created for Ignite Chicago. Ignite talks are special because speakers are required to present their thoughts in five minutes with slides that auto-advance every fifteen seconds. Thank you Stella Fayman and Tim Jahn for organizing the event.
About the Author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany Steve Blank worked in, owned, or managed eight different silicon valley startups in the course of twenty years. His eighth startup was very successful; he was able to exit with enough money to retire. At that point, Blank began to reflect on the successes and failures of the various startups he had been involved with. Reflection led to lectures at Stanford, Berkeley, and Columbia. Notes from his lectures evolved into the book: The Four Steps to the Epiphany.
Blank noticed that startups went through predictable patterns of success or failure. Yes, there are multiple paths to failure, but there are fewer paths to success. Blank believes he has found a success path that applies to most startups.
Counter Example: Webvan
Sometimes it helps to explain an idea through counter example. Webvan was built to deliver groceries to people who ordered on the web. The problem? Webvan built software and warehouses before they had a reliable supply of customers. They were so confident of their future success that they spent close to one billion dollars building infrastructure. They ran out of money before they had customers.
It’s not fair to pick on Webvan when so many other companies make the same mistake. Remember the Apple Newton? Apple is a great company, but they put tons of money into an early PDA (the Newton) before customers even knew what a PDA was. Same with Motorola. Motorola’s Iridium was supposed to be a network of communications satellites covering the planet. Satellites designed to give internet and phone access to every human on planet earth. The problem: Nobody could afford Iridium. In these examples, Motorola, Apple, and Webvan, all burned through money before they had a steady supply of customers. There is a better way.
The Four Steps
Steve Blank lists The Four Steps to the Epiphany as:
Customer Discovery
Customer Validation
Customer Creation
Company Building
There are a few things to point out about the steps. First the process is iterative, not linear. If at any point we get stuck, we go back and repeat a step (or two) based on what we’ve learned. A smaller repetition might be termed an iteration. But if the entrepreneur needs to revisit the entire business plan, or change basic assumptions in the business model, the repetition/backtracking would be termed a pivot.
Customer Discovery and the Minimum Viable Product
Every entrepreneur has an idea about what customers want. We all know something of the pain felt by our customers, or so we think. Blank’s suggestion: Take what you know about your prospective customers’ pain and build a minimum viable product (MVP) with just enough features to address the pain. Then get outside the building. Get away from wherever it is that you work and talk to real customers with your MVP in hand. Let them try it. They’ll give you valuable feedback about what you should do next. If their pain is great enough, and if your MVP is good enough, they’ll buy it.
Which Customers?
It’s important to note the type of customer we want at this stage. We want early adopters. We want customers who are feeling pain in the entrepreneur’s area of expertise. Perhaps customers who have tried to solve the problem themselves with no success. Early adopters will give us the most useful & actionable feedback at this stage.
Customer Validation
The customer validation step is complete when early adopters buy the product we’re offering. When customers buy, we know we have a valid product. If they don’t buy, it might be time to pivot. In this context, pivot means to change the basic assumptions of the business we’re building. We might change pricing, features, or we might change our entire approach to customers. Many startups go through several pivots before achieving success.
Customer Creation
After we’ve discovered customers, and after we’ve gone through customer validation, it’s time to create more customers. Our initial customers were the early adopters and innovators. In the customer creation step, we move beyond our initial customers into the majority. At this point we begin to spend money on marketing.
Company Building
After we’ve gone through the first three customer-oriented steps, we build the company. Now it’s time to spend money on infrastructure, warehouses, expensive customized software… anything we need to scale the company as large as we can. Notice that we don’t try to scale until after we figure out how to develop a steady supply of customers.
That’s Not All…
We live in a time of continuous & rapid change. Once a business has become successful with The Four Steps, it’s important to remain watchful for new opportunities. Good companies become great when they execute consistently over time.
February 16, 2011 – By Raymond T. Hightower | Comments Off
I questioned Apple’s wisdom when they decided to open retail stores. But every time I visit Apple’s Genius Bar, I’m glad they went retail. Well done, Olin Langley!
Feelings of grave concern set in this morning when I powered up my MacBook Pro only to find out that it wouldn’t power up. I’m dependent on my laptop for daily work like most people in my field.
Data loss is not an issue since we use a belt & suspenders backup policy here at WisdomGroup. Time Machine & Mozy keep us well covered. But downtime is always an issue because downtime costs time.
Solution: I grabbed the first available appointment at the Genius Bar. Less than five minutes after he first saw the machine, Olin Langley found that I had a bad AC adapter. He swapped the adapter and my machine was back in business.
Kudos to Apple, and kudos to Olin Langley. Well done.
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