Must Watch Interview: NEST Co-founder Matt Rogers

This interview with Matt Rogers, the co-fouder of NEST, is a revealing look at the formation of a truly great startup, and is a must watch for any entrepreneur.  

Matt left an amazing job at Apple in 2010 to co-found Nest Labs. Nest, which received funding from some of the best venture capitalists in the world including Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Shasta and Google Ventures has revolutionized the mundane and oft ignored home thermostat. And my sense is that there is much more to come from this great company.

Nest is an exciting company at an exciting time. The rise of the internet of things, and the coming of age of the smart home are two interesting trends (among others) driving a renaissance in hardware startups. We're starting to see a plethora of internet connected appliances, from smart watering systems that know all about pending rainfall to power hungry clothes dryers that know when the cheapest electricity is available.

Smart Advertising: Smart Cars To The Rescue

From Creativity Online

To promote Mercedes Smart cars to Russians (who like driving big cars), BBDO Russia actively proved to potential customers the benefits of having a smaller vehicle. Many Russians get towed on weekend shopping trips for parking illegally; and the traffic is also notoriously bad in the city. So in March Smart offered free rides to those stranded by having their vehicles towed - getting them to take a test drive without requesting one, and see what a difference having a small car makes when parking is scarce and traffic heavy.

623 car-less drivers were rescued during three days. The agency encouraged people to thank the Smart brand on social media, while blogs and news portals picked up on the stories and test drives increased 10 fold. Sales increased by 300% in the two weeks following the event.

This had so many elements of a modern, multi-faceted, ad campaign ... purpose built for social media amplification. 

Re-imagining the UX for iOS 7

With Apple's WWDC just around the corner, we're being teased by the tantalizing possibility that Apple will deliver a much overdue refresh of the UX in iOS 7.

As the conference nears, designers are falling over each other to present their visions of what an iOS 7 remake might entail.

Here is one interesting one - in the spirit of flat design. It comes from the talented folks at SimplyZesty, a Dublin, Ireland based digital agency. 

You can read their full post here.

Building A Culture That Works: The CEO As The Cultural Epicenter

In this excellent post, Peter Levine, who's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, talks about the profound impact a CEO has on the culture of a company.

This is so true ... companies are defined by their cultures ... and cultures are defined from the CEO on down. You cannot manufacture a culture that is inconsistent from the beliefs and actions of a CEO. No matter how hard you try.

It is a must read for any aspiring CEOs. Remember that the expectations you have of others must be aligned with the expectations you place on yourself. And that the behaviour of your team will eventually be aligned with, and influenced by, your behaviours.

“The organization reflects the behavior and characteristics of the CEO, and that establishes the culture. Foster an environment of open communication and the organization inherits a culture of open communication. Operationally detailed? The organization becomes operationally detailed. Political? The organization becomes political. Curse a lot? The organization curses. Angry? The organization gets angry. Have a big office? Everyone wants a big office. It doesn’t matter what’s written on a coffee mug or on a “culture” slide, what you do as a CEO, day in and day out, and how you behave will define your company’s culture.

Despite the best intentions, companies often become culturally dysfunctional. This occurs when leadership has a perception about the culture that conflicts with reality, or leadership behaves differently than what might be written down. ”

— http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/27/building-a-culture-that-works-the-ceo-as-the-cultural-epicenter/

Wearing Your Computer

We all know it's coming ... regardless of the manufacturer, or the OS, the smart watch will rise in the near future.

Shortly a wide range of digital services will be delivered from your wrist ... payments, alerts, IDV, contextual information, directions, etc.

It's rather exciting if you ask me.  But wearable computing raises the bar on usability and design significantly.

Below is a rather stunning 3D render of what such a device might look like, and how it might work.

Re-imagining Education

Sugata Mitra, in this absolutely endearing TED talk, speaks about how the rise of the internet and cloud computing should compel us to re-imagine education ... a system he claims isn't broken, per se, just built for another world and another time.

His stories of how children in the slums of India, left unaided with a computer stuck in a wall, began a self directed journey of learning, is an example of why we might consider a different paradigm for education. No longer just top down, but bottom up.

Another great example of this sort of thinking comes from Salman Khan (founder of the Khan Academy). Millions of kids around the world now turn to the Khan Academy's on-line educational videos and multi-media activities to grasp some of the more complex elements of math and science. Why? Because Khan's approach not only makes the topics approachable, amusing and engaging, it enables kids to learn at their own pace.

Watch and find out why one kid said, "this was the first time I smiled doing a derivative". 

Education, done well, can be captivating.  

As Sir Ken Robinson so aptly put it in his TED talk on education:

“I think we have to change metaphors. We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”

— http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

If you are interested in the topic of education, TED has pulled together a list of some of their favourites in a post on their blog.

10 talks on making schools great

Engaging Advertising

Once in a while, ads come along and cut through the clutter, engage you, amuse you ... and ... deliver the message they intended to. Tor Myren is one of the best at this, and his eTrade Baby ads are some of my favourites.

However, in 2011, Volkswagen debuted a classic ... during, of course, the Superbowl.

What makes a good engineering culture

Great products are built by great engineering teams, and great engineering teams are built on great engineering cultures. The attached post from Edmond Lau (who's an engineer at Quora), is one of the best definitions of what makes a great engineering culture I have seen in a long time.

He focuses on 10 key elements:

1. Optimize for iteration speed
2. Push relentlessly toward automation
3. Build the right software abstractions
4. Develop a focus on high code quality with code reviews
5. Maintain a respectful work environment
6. Build shared ownership of code
7. Invest in automated testing
8. Allot 20% Time
9. Build a culture of learning and continuous improvement
10. Hire the best 

This all sounds like motherhood and apple pie stuff, but it isn't and I encourage you to read his well written post here: 

Making Music On The Go

There's no doubt that the iPad has revolutionized music creation on the go. From apps like Garageband (which really set the bar) to newer entrants from old standards like Image Line (FL Mobile), the quality of this ecosystem has risen exponentially over the last year.

Over the past few months, as I've sat on numerous airplanes, I've had a chance to play with some of this stuff ... and it's been a ton of fun. However, beyond the sheer enjoyment of creating music, we as mobile app developers can learn a lot from our counterparts in this space. I often marvel at the cunning way in which these developers have created stunning and efficient user experiences. Trust me, it's really worth taking a look ...

Making music is not something I get a chance to do very often, and it's not something that I'd argue I have a huge amount of skill at, but these applications greatly facilitate the process of taking an idea from your head to the real world in a way that I don't think has been possible before.

In a way, these tools are doing for music creation what digital cameras have done for photography ... democratizing it.

Happy New Year!

Ontario Venture Summit Keynote

For those who are interested, here is the video from the keynote I gave last year at the Ontario Venture Summit. 

Here are the accompanying slides.

Ontario Venture Summit Keynote from Mark Ruddock