Miles To Go.

Austin has a groove

I hadn’t been to Austin for SX for awhile, and the differences are palpable. Each of these observations deserve a post on their own (blog tonnage warning), but here’s the brief from the plane

1: These kids won’t lap their Parents, but they’re over it

UT Spring break notwithstanding, SXSW trends pretty young but not tragically hip. I’d call it self-sufficiently hip. Perhaps its a stack of student debts, lack of faith in future entitlements, or a crap job market but most everyone here lives and breathes self-reliance. Kinda reminds me of KFAC in some ways.

No, they likely won’t end up better off than their parents but they have founds ways- ingenious ways – to have a share in interesting events, luxuries and experiences. It is the walking personification of the asset light generation, a veritable ride-sharing, house sharing, tab splitting mobile-social-fueled existence. You can see it in the number of backpacks lugged around. The premium real estate around power outlets. The use of timely information to scout out clean bathrooms and taco trucks still serving food. Maybe this generation can’t get what everything they want, but they sure use information to get what they need.

2: Booze may work for inspiration: but Coffee is for Execution

Ok, close to SxCentral (Dirty 6th or perhaps Rainey) the parties roll on late into the night. Bold dreams do emanate from these spots, no doubt. But who will do them? No-one with a hang-over I assure you. Life is not a Reality show perversion of how things get done. The business still happens the next morning, by guys sipping coffee and probably not wearing skinny jeans . I noticed on Don Dodge on twitter, who has backed his share of great SXSW start-ups, hits the parties for a few pics but probably doesn’t extend the night further… unless the band is good. He’s one worth following.

3: Mobile Social Local drives peer actions

Even Steve Case does sharing

And how. In this urbania of the future, I can’t remember anyone who didn’t whip out a smartphone every 90 seconds. Pedi-cab drivers checking directions. SXSW’s checking in on panels, flash mobs, and open bathrooms. Cops, using video. Really no surprise there. But when asked, how many of them pay for apps or subscribe to content the answer was rarely anything but “what?” (see #1 Above).

This of course, drives a few of the major theses of my activity: mobile, social and local will be supported by increasingly relevant and targeted ads. It would help if they were displayed in appealing, but unobtrusive ways but that’s on its way as well. While I was there, I saw a stat that online screen time had yielded to mobile screen time. Revenue isn’t that far behind. Mojiva is ideally positioned for both.

I also noticed that a huge focus of the Sharing Economy conversation (aka Asset Light, Collaborative Consumption, Peer to Peer Economy- talk about a naming clusterjam!) is all about Trust. How will Sharing grow if every transaction comes with the doubt and questioning that goes like this : I know I will make (save) money on this, but might I die doing it? News from the washington Post this weeks kinda underscores the point. Who is behind that screen? Can I just rely on the one network to provide that data (and are they conflicted b/c they want the transaction)? Isn’t there a repository of all the identity, behavior and transaction data that sits with a third-party and can quickly display a dossier on a potential counterparty? I had a back and forth with FAKEGRIMLOCK (yes, all caps please) about ways the Sharing Networks might be compelled to share their API toward this end (his suggestion was a ray-gun).  Leah Busque from Task Rabbit mentioned TrustCloud as an option in her panel on sharing- no ray-gun needed. She’s a nice lady and a great entrepreneur.

4. Space: the Everest of STEM

The biggest draw, by far, was the rockstar Elon Musk. And his expertise and passion for Science, Tech, Engineering and Math overfloweth. PayPal, ok. But this guy has Tesla and SpaceX rocking along while parenting five kids. The sheer out-of-this-world challenges this guy takes on, and the STEM talent he draws to do it should be an analog for our entire workforce. Learn STEM, and develop a passion for it. Pursue bold visions.

5. Being Top ten in the information race hardly matters

Just ask #11 in line at the taco truck at 3am. Not so long ago, information was valuable for a lot longer, long as your counterparty didn’t have it yet. Now, most information travels so fast and is so complete that is becoming commoditized. So what counts anymore? Speed, and creativity.

Sam Lessin had a brilliant talk on this BTW. And ironically but perhaps not un-related, his dear departed father Bob wrote a small treatise (Lessin’s Lessons) on what is essentially the asset light generation I discuss above. Great read if you can still find it- self published of course. Ahead of his time. Sam is a great continuation of his legacy.

If everyone has about the same information, at the same time the people who will extract the most value from it will be those that get it first, those that understand it first, and devise a creative angle to use it. It’s an interesting leveler of the playing field.

So that’s the quickie from SXSW. More to come on each of these. But my takeaway for the week is “Live in the future: build what’s missing”.

My Frequent disclaimer: I own equity in TrustCloud and Mojiva. 

Gate is actually the basis of the Vaux Logo

Despite focusing most of my writing efforts on my blog, and keeping up with the world via my twitter the year-end letter to Vaux angels is a tradition well worth continuing. I’ve cribbed the best of it here…

 Discover. Develop. Deliver.

These three words are scrawled across everything I do for Vaux. They are three parts of my personal mission to success as entrepreneur and angel investor, which I had the honor of mapping out in a 2012 white paper for the Family Office Association  “Angel Investing for the Family Office” . I took a hard look at the process of building a foundation on the long journey from inception to exit, and nowadays I plan my week based on these categories. I color code each meeting in my outlook. They might as well be scrawled on my bathroom mirror in lipstick. They are the cycle of life for Vaux les Ventures and the angels that have supported these endeavors for nearly 10 years. Here’s what these simple words mean to me:

Discover is about being very focused on what you can do well, and what markets will have an impact that can generate angel returns. Big market trends that people don’t yet see, or are unwilling to accept. Trends that will obviously converge, but no one knows exactly when. It means being early and brave, but it also means being patient to find the right mix that can sustain the long march. This is where the DNA of the business is set: habits formed early are virtually impossible to break. Many people in the business call this “deal flow”, and I did too for a while but I soured on the term as too many IB ‘s and VC’s (both of which I have been) over-use it. Having a well know criteria for how to invest and who to invest with seems to do very well in attracting the right types of people. So does being a good guy. But it’s about discovery as much as it is about network. And that discovery includes markets and their real problems as well as solutions and the best team to build them.

A recent example of this would be my work on WellAware, the mobile health solution. I’m as committed as ever to the trend of mobile devices having profound affect on health and wellness. And I truly believe that very simple data can have tremendous impact on lives. The Wellaware team did a tremendous job developing the platform for this theory to play out, but certainly overshot the MVP standard. What we need in 2013 is more cycles with large user bases to refine our solution, likely in the mobile environment.

Develop is where the entrepreneur (in anyone!) takes over: translating a vision for a product solution into a product itself, and testing it with users to see if the darn thing works. It takes tremendous amounts of courage, persistence and luck. Some attempts are ridiculously off the mark. Ironically, more often there are overshots than undershots when going for the minimally viable product. And users are rarely the viral dream everyone hopes for- more like a block-by-block struggle to get to a vantage point where people notice you. But more than product and users, the team is the big part of the develop picture. Entrepreneurs have a passion for building things are not always Schwartkoffs when it comes to leading people. And that is where the coaching and mentoring foundation is laid. Capital begins to show up at this point, as we have baked enough of the risk out of the opportunity for larger sources of capital to begin to show interest. That too is a major challenge in this phase, and if you grow fast enough, it never ends.

[Major edits here from the angel letter. Sorry, that's not public.]

The poster child for the develop phase is certainly TrustCloud, which just 9 months ago had product solution in search of a problem, no user base, and a team that had already endured a few pivots. Such are the risks of being early! But the saving grace was each of the founders used the sharing economy and saw what it could deliver, as well as its limitations. Something had to give, we thought.

And 2012 was full of such breaks, as TrustCloud found its core team, delivered a product and began building users at an impressive clip  (10x from July to December) after the Wall Street Journal picked us up. Check out the product here, or the very impressive Facebook TrustCloud user group (which tracks bugs and promotes the product passionately). The Company rolls into the New Year with a new Peer Protect insurance product to couple with it’s ever growing number of sharing networks.  Kudos to the indefatigable and imminently coachable CEO Xin Chung, who details the year here:

 I shared keys to my NYC apartment on Airbnb, rides through San Francisco in a Sidecar, and my workload with TaskRabbits. I’m not alone– people worldwide are sharing more than ever with millions of room-nights booked, cars rented, and dogs walked by reputable strangers. The movement is called The Sharing Economy, Collaborative Consumption, or as Mary Meeker calls it, living Asset Light. (this is a great read! Don’t miss it!)

 Flush with VC funding, the movement scaled fast in 2012– but not without growing pains: A quick look at recent sharing history would give anyone pause before sharing with a stranger. Home sharing market leader Airbnb had a redux of its 2011 EJ incident with the so-called airbed & brothel snafu where a Swedish apartment was literally pimped-out. Carsharing had it’s own collisions with the luxury carsharing service HiGear shutting down due to thefts, car sharer RelayRides’ liability issues with a fatality crash, and regulatory fines for on-demand ride-sharers.

 These events highlighted that trust between strangers in peer-to-peer marketplaces must keep pace with their own rapid growth. In the offline world, hotels have long adopted star ratings, rental cars are licensed and insured by brands spend billions to give consumers confidence to buy. Since online, peer to-peer marketplaces powered by micro-entrepreneurs don’t have time to brand themselves or vet strangers, they are much less efficient as buyers and sellers waste time sizing each other up, figuring out a schedule and even haggling over price before committing. Trust can make these transactions much faster, and insuring the risk is something we look forward to. Read more at TrustCloud’s Blog.

Deliver is where all the hard work pays off. That would seem like a triumphant moment, and I’ll allow myself a few. But as I have matured it has become a little more bittersweet. Here are companies we have built from scratch, communities that started with a handful of people, angel capital that came in for under $1M pre money. And despite some intermittent liquidity opportunities, in some cases these companies have futures that remain bright(er). We have seen large that we turned down; we may see 2x-3x-4x from here (or of course, we may not). So parting with some or all of the ownership isn’t as easy as “see ya later”. It’s an asset, with a value that has to be managed detachment that is at arms’ length, hard as that may be. We also live in a world of high risk, so those precious few windows of liquidity opportunity have to be considered when they are open.

[More major edits here from the angel letter. Sorry, that's not public.]

In summary, I guess I feel every venture I have been involved with has contributed to the next. Things I have learned about the Discover phase have allowed for better Develop results. Those few short peeks at liquidity in Deliver have been viewed with a paradigm that allows the whole group to consider individualized risk and reward before deciding on liquidity. And of course, the success through the process has allowed us the opportunity to feed the beast, return to what we do best, and further diversify with another opportunity.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to work in the field that I do, side by side with talented entrepreneurs, backed by caring and value adding angels that ask good questions and have the patience to help realize the vision I had almost ten years ago. We’ll see great opportunities in each of the three key Phases in 2013. Drop me a line and we’ll discuss which ones best fit your criteria in the days ahead.

All my best in the New Year,

Meet Fake Grimlock

Mary Meeker just called it: Sharing is now a megatrend.

In her wildly popular bi-annual prognosis, Meeker points to the demise of asset-heavy life especially among 20 somethings wherebye sharing economy and  smartphones free time and money, creating an asset-light generation.

So how does this relate to virtual dinosaurs and dating? Hang on, let me tell a good story. Dialing it back a bit, I was watching Cat in the Hat with my son this morning and began to wonder about how that famous tech character might teach us something about a this big trend, now that Mary called it. Suppose I pose these questions abut the tech world’s favorite virtual persona Fake Grimlock… as only Dr. Seuss could:

Would you meet him in a mall? Would you pass him in the hall?
Would you let him drive your car? Would you let him drive it far?
Would you let him watch your pet? Would he eat them, hmm, sure bet?
Would you let him tutor the kids? Could you, would you blink an eyelid?
Would you let him sleep upon your couch? Would he scare you with those teeth- Ouch!
Would you date him late at night? Would you lend him money? Right!

Which means, essentially, if you were going to do a “Sharing Transaction” with an unknown Peer, do you trust the person behind fake grimlock? He’s extremely well known in a small circle of tech entrepreneurs (and deservedly so- he’s hilarious in a CAPSLOCK kinda way). But my point is, there are millions and millions of Fake Grimlocks out there.

From Spencer 323232 on gMail to Pineapple88 on EBay, people have for more than a decade created and maintained personas and avatars for everything from virtual gaming to very real Craig’s listings. Taking it back to Dot.com days, we used to hear the reason the internet was popular was … no one knew you were a dog. People could go online (Chatrooms!) under any handle they chose and behave pretty much with impunity. It was the digital equivalent of turning out the lights at a teen mixer. Stupid ideas came and went, as did plenty of fortunes and not a few great companies. But the ability to take on an alias, or even build an avatar in another parallel world lingered as a quaint benefit from back in the day. To some gaming sites, it’s a hell of a business that virtual world.

But now comes along Social, Mobile and Local where a billion people share their profiles, activities, photos and innermost thoughts with perhaps way too many friends. Privacy was redefined, or its boundaries were pushed out by the devils favorite vice, vanity. Rachel Botsman called it early with her Colaborative Consumption moniker, and subsequently has talked about trust within peer networks a lot. Now, as big data companies are starting to realize this data is meaningful, strong voices are pointing out that people should own their own data. Tim Berners Lee is one such voice, having started what I call the “Data to the People” movement with this Guardian interview. Add to this a rich mix of a green consciousness, underemployed/over-indebted college graduates and a sluggish economy and you get the Sharing Economy a/k/a the very more wordy Collaborative Consumption. Al it needs now is some glue, or as Neal Gorenflo recently said in a post to Shareable Magazine the dramatic transformation of the economy that’s needed is not going to happen until a large coalition begins to work together.

This is precisely why companies like TrustCloud, Connect.me  and MiiCard are helping stitch together a trust and reputation metric for the Peer economy. Basically, in 2012 everyone knows you are  dinosaur, and if you are transparent enough with it, more and more people are ok with it. So, for argument’s sake, let’s say Grimlock does not want to reveal his identity, but he wants to claim credit for all the good things he has done online. He has a ton of influence and follows (you can see that from twitter or Klout) but maybe he also contributes to Stack Overflow and helps out on GitHub under Grimmy22. Maybe he maintains an ebay account where he is top rated as a seller, but under FakeyBoy101. He has a few verifiable email addresses, and actually lives somewhere under the name Human B. Good. What if Human B Good claimed all that data and consolidated in one place- without actually divulging that he was Grimmy22, FakeyBoy101 or any other avatar. But he claimed the credit for all the good things he does for the community under whatever name. If he was transparent enough to verify and share his human identity, he’d be golden, or the human behind him would be. And all without blowing the connection to the mysterious Grimlock. Here’s my point: thousands of people every week are coming to that conclusion and getting TrustCards.

So… let’s look again at these peer transactions

Would you meet him in a mall? Would you pass him in the hall? 

This is the perfect CraigsList question. If Grimlock offered me $100 cash for my old iPhone in some dodgy exchange in the mall parking lot, it’s a pass. To much risk there. But if Human B. Good made the same offer (and had claimed all the virtuous data Grimock threw off), it would be a different story.

Would you let him drive your car? Would you let him drive it far?

This is the GetAround/Relay Rides/ Ridepost question. As Anotonin Leonard’s partner Benjamin Tinq (both OuiShare guys) remarked, “Ten years after Jeremy Rifkin wrote The Age of Access, shared mobility is fundamentally changing the way people think about car ownership, among other things. Especially the younger ones, to whom owning a car has lost its appeal of independance, which is now embodied by electronic and social media devices. So you want me to hand over the keys to  a $30k asset so Grimlock and his monster buddies can go up skiing Vermont for the weekend, and he will give me… $30 per day? Can you say asymmetrical risk? And for some extra credit reading, has anyone really looked at their insurance coverage when you turn your car into a small business. The answer is pretty disappointing (and the backup from the sponsoring sharing network won’t be good for much either, especially as that risk scales). But Human B. Good give me a better feeling about his identity, interactions and behavior with his TrustScore. Perhaps things would have been better for HighGear had they such a system in place. RideShare is already doing this, and more will follow I think.

Would you let him watch your pet? Would he eat them, hmm, sure bet?

Talk about precious assets! I would not turn Baxter over to Grimlock for fear of dinner! Rover.com is already onto this, and has trustscores flowing out to their 70,000 dog watchers nationwide. Essentially, people Human B. Good would get the job, and Baxter would come home safe (and incidentally, my home would be safe, seeing as how Human B. Good has the keys to the house).

Would you let him sleep upon your couch? Would he scare you with those teeth- Ouch!

This one comes right out of AirBnB’s book- and Wimdu, LoveHomeSwap, HomeAway, InterHome and lots of others. While millions of room nights have been booked, as the early adopted give way to a more mass acceptance of “crashing on the couch”, so to will a demand grow for “who is this”, and from both sides of the transaction. AirBnB has had its “Ej Incident” and the “Hookers on Holiday“, which at the very least left a bad taste (sorry) for the hosts. I’ve heard there are plenty more where those came from. But there is risk on the guest side as well, just ask the poor blokes who wired in advance for their Fun and Sun Holiday in France and got… (sorry) just pictures for their trouble (the house did not exist), and the hosts, well what do you think? Again, no keys in this scenario for Grimlock. Human B. Good, more likely.

Would you date him late at night? Would you lend him money? Right!

So after the roundup of the “Sharing Companies”, it makes sense to imagine the other places that a trust and identity system could help other Peer economies. While I have heard stories of young ladies throwing themselves at Grimlock at his personal appearances, I’m not so sure that is scalable. Dating is the ultimate peer transaction, and one where a few simple verifications would do a world of good. To wit: a) does the guy really make $100k+ and b) are those photos of the girl recent or retouched? Likewise, peer lending could be greatly enhanced with a similar solution. Of course, the incidence and transaction data that flows back through the intake API becomes crucial to the richness of the scores.

So to wrap this one in a bow… there is a great saying about trust and context: I would trust my dog with my life, but not with my hamburger.

Grimlock has done a good many great things for our tech community across a few social networks. He is known to the community, and he adds to it. And that’s fine for the virtual world. But for the rest of us, so much of our lives pass between the virtual and real worlds. And many of us have piled up so much virtuous data, it’s time to start harvesting it, claiming it and organizing it in one place that makes it useful to a variety of networks.

We all have our data from our own versions of Grimlock out there. Start using it.

 Full disclosure: I mention TrustCloud here. I am an angel investor in same. 

Twinkies

Only in America would people violently trample each other for discounts, exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have.

Consumption of calories.

The Twinkee headline this week got me thinking about, with all our bounty we are unable, unwilling or incapable of  governing our intake.  Look, 150 calories of processed corn syrup won’t kill anyone in one sitting. But who in America eats one? And who does it just once. This food group has been a best seller in America for a generation. Later in the week, another caloric orgy takes place; It’s hard to believe, perhaps, that the average American Thanksgiving meal equals 3,000 Calories That would mean a 160 lb. person would have to run at a moderate pace for four hours, swim for five hours or walk 30 miles to burn off a 3,000-calorie Thanksgiving Day meal. Most do not.  Trying to work that off with the halftime football toss is as futile as try to get warmth from the slanting sun as the ball flies through a deep winter sky.

Consumption of natural resources.

How much gasoline does the United States consume? 1.18 gallons per person per day, every day. This figure includes every man women and child, (only 89% have licences, and about half of them in my neighborhood deserve to be retested regularly). 33 Gallons a month, enough to drive a little less than 1,000 miles on any of our great highways for the princely sum of about $4.00 per gallon. In France, that would run you about $10.00 per gallon, which is a) realistic , b) forces conservation, c) reduces the number of escalades tooling around in Paris. Add that to the amount of plastic we consume (another pertro-product) and you have the makings of a genuine addiction.

Consumption of Media.

The one that bothers me the most, and demonstrates the worst lack of self control is couch potato TV time: 2.5 to 2.9 hours per day. Worse as you get older. I’m not sure if this accounts for time spent on other screens like tablets and phones. I doubt it, and I will concede that at least most of that screen time is spent learning, communicating and socializing (in a mild form). But almost 3 hours per day in front of  the TV tells me people need something better to do.

So, the point is this: if even the French can point it out (and do so with empathy) it must be pretty obvious. If we can spend a little more time being thankful for what we have, consuming in more reasonable proportions, and buying and wasting a little less of what we don’t really need… we’ll be a little better off.

Giving up Twinkees is a good start.

Charlie Green, author of Trusted Advisor

(MS) Since there is so much buzz around Sharing, (I’ve written about it recently here, here and here) and it’s key component, Trust, I’ve asked some experts to lend their opinions on my blog to fill out the color commentary. Here’s Charlie Green;

Whether you call it “the sharing economy” or “collaborative consumption,” there’s a fascinating new economic and social phenomenon going on.  While not identical, both terms refer to markets for the sharing of products and services between individuals.

It may seem obvious that the role of trust is pretty critical. But just what that role is turns out to be not so obvious.    

Background

The chroniclers of the movement are Rachel Botsman (Botsman & Rogers, What’s Mine is Yours), and Lisa Gansky (The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing). Botsman characterizes three sub-markets: product-services systems (like ZipCar), redistribution markets (eBay), and collaborative lifestyles (CouchSurfing).

Some of those sub-markets hint at huge scale economies: how many zillions of available-seat-miles go unused on the nation’s streets and highways on driver-only trips? How many available car-hours per day are actually used for driving, as opposed to uselessly hogging valuable real estate? And for nearly every traveler vacationing, there’s an empty house back home going unutilized.

Other sub-markets are more akin to intriguing social experiments: imagine a global foreign exchange student program run for adults, only faster, bigger, and with do-it-yourself vetting, and you’ve got something like CouchSurfing.

In an odd way, “markets” is precisely the wrong way to describe the social experiment part of the phenomenon – it’s anti-market, in a sense, to focus on collaboration and reduced consumption, rather than on increased sales and  intermediating exchanges.

But in more traditional senses, these are very much markets, with loads of interest. Technologies are enabling peer-to-peer interactions; but unlike stock exchanges and book-buying, many of them exist to facilitate real flesh-and-blood interactions. Subletting your house or apartment to someone, or simply hosting an out-of-town visitor, is no trivial social exercise. And lending out your car or tools, while not necessarily social, also involves a social risk.

Which is where trust comes in.

Trust in the Sharing Economy

If you’re going to open up your house to someone you’ve never met before, you will make some form of trust calculus about the possible guest.

The reverse is true as well: if you’re going to go spend some time as the house-guest of a perfect stranger, you also will make some assessment along the lines of, “Do I, or do I not, trust these people?”

Might there be a secondary market here for trust. Indeed, there might.  (Disclosure: I have a small relationship with one such venture, TrustCloud). Suddenly, the decision to trust has economic, and possibly very personal, consequences.

Trusting and Being Trustworthy.  People often talk about “trust” as if it were a single thing.  It’s not.  “Trust” is the result of a trustor and a trustee arriving at an agreement. Trusting is not the same as being trusted. Trust is, if you’ll pardon the abstract language, an asymmetric relationship.

To be clear, the one doing the trusting (the trustor) is the one taking the risk. If I loan my tools or house to you, you might abuse them. The trustee, by contrast, takes little risk.

The trustor’s decision is based partly on the perception of the trustworthiness of the trustee. Wouldn’t it be great, the thinking goes, if we could come up with the equivalent of a FICO credit score for would-be trustees.

The search for trustworthiness metrics goes in two directions. One is reputation;  the other is behavior. Reputation is relatively easy to assess; unfortunately, it’s also easy to game, and can easily be confused with notoriety. Kim Kardashian may score high on reputation, and even influence – but does that mean you trust her?

Behavior is harder to game: to fake behavioral dependability, I would have to establish a track record of dependable behavior – which is, after all, the point. It can be faked, of course, but such an elaborate con requires a level of effort quite out of proportion to the benefit, not to mention out of character.

Trusting. It’s easy to focus just on measuring trustworthiness, particularly in the product-services and redistribution markets, where the trustor wants information about the trustee to mitigate downside risk.

But in the collaborative lifestyles segments of the movement, it’s not just the trustworthiness of the trustee that is important, but also the trustor’s propensity to trust. In the fascinating sub-movement that is Couchsurfing, the parties aren’t just looking to cut risk: they want upside potential in terms of fascinating people willing to take social risks in order to meet others. They want trustors.

The 60s Redux?

The parallel with the 60s is instructive. Some of the era’s social experimentation didn’t make it out of the 70s. But the Beatles, Steve Jobs, and the Grateful Dead were all once-radical types who created models that are mainstream business today.

Even the hard-core economic segments of the sharing economy aren’t as radical as we think. The timeshare industry “shared” underutilized vacation home capacity; so did distributed computing in the 70s-80s. McDonalds’ discovery of breakfast was another capacity utilization play that paid off big.

In any case, we’re all going to be talking more about trust. And that’s likely a good thing for us all.

Doug Krugman, Greg Matusky, Roo Rogers, (M) and Xin Chung @S2 Learning Even

the woods are lovely, dark and deep
but I have promises to keep
and miles to go before I sleep
miles to go before I sleep

Robert Frost, in a poem of simplicity itself, captures the essence of the foundations of trust: promises kept.

I was at Shared Squared NYC’s monthly learning event last night, where a whole lot of people made good on a whole lot of promises. And there was lots of chatter about trust, as the social networks have spawned so much peer to peer interaction (and the P2P has spawned its share of weird interactions).

In short, the problem that is emerging is that people, for better or worse, form  judgements based upon online information, make promises and commitments, and then are disappointed with the related offline episodes. Happens all the time, across a variety of peer to peer actions. There are a gazillion examples of the difficulties of this toggle, like

• Lady GaGa tickets bought through Craigslist for cash at the last-minute
• A Wimdu rental, where the pics were great, but the pillows just plain smell.
• A RelayRide renter who changes his plans last minute and screws up the rest of your calendar

But the upside of getting trust right in the sharing economy (and in P2P lending, and in dating, etc etc.) is that more trust leads to more and faster transactions and interactions within a community. I think Stephen MR Covey (son of 7 Habits Stephen) had it right quite awhile ago when he wrote The Speed of Trust. You can add his good work to these recent pieces on the subject:

• The Trust Projects recent manifesto…
• Letters and outreach to the community by Scaffold and Legit
• Neal Gorenflo doing everything possible to forward the sharing conversation via shareable (Nice work!)
• Shared Squared finally announcing an event calendar in NYC

But, at some point, in order to truly scale, I really passionately believe the sharing economy must deliver an indicator of trust between the two parties in a transaction increases if not ensures the assets at risk. The only product in the market that is out there, doing it today and in increasing numbers with both communities and users is TrustCloud. (You can claim your TrustCloud here). And yes, I am an investor and have blogged on the topic here, here and here.

Eventually, they will be compelled to ensure trust is sufficient. And just as airbnb has done, others will need to underwrite that risk. People- and perhaps their insurers! – will want better answers to questions like:

• Will my car be returned in good order?
• Will my apartment be sacked while a couchsurfer is there?
• Will my boat he left on the rocks by this drifter that borrowed it?
• Is my daughter safe with this tutor who comes to the house?
• Will I ever see my lawn mower again?
• Will this ride share going to get me to work, or roll me out of the car in Mexico?

And all that attention has forwarded the discussion, but trust is not an absolute from the get go. We as humans observe behavior and actions before trust is earned,  and we frequently reassess trust levels along the way. It can work between online and offline as long as it is observed, recorded and elegantly presented in context.

So, not unlike the man in Frost’s Poem…

The accumulation of recorded behavior, events and affinities that leads to the confidence to exchange something of value, tangible or intangible is IMHO the most accurate and applicable definition of Trust that any P2P marketplace can rely on.  

And this is why, simply, behavior trumps reputation every time.

PS: I’d love to hear what you think of the new TrustCloud. Enter your comments below, or on their site. Mine is above at the top of my blog.

Largest on water cleanup- Ever.

News spread pretty quickly that the Shell Oil LNG platform destined for Long Island Sound sunk back into oblivion last week, likely for good. In its proposed form, it would have towered above all other structures on either side of that great body of water and inspired the curses of generations to follow. It should have been a procedural layup, with the interests of the Sound split between two states, both struggling with budget and resource constraints, and zero organized advocacy to oppose the revenue generating and cost saving proposal.

Now the legend of how that didn’t happen continues to grow, just as quietly as it snuck up on everybody before the battle began.

Begin with Leah Schmalz, a delightful director of legal and legislative affairs for Save the Sound, a program of Connecticut Fund for the Environment who began the opposition eight years ago with meager resources and virtually zero platform to get the word out. She picked her punches wisely.

Then, out of no where, Kayak for a Cause jumped in, ostensibly because ”Save the Sound” had the brand that most directly fit the core values of the organization. But as KFAC learned more, both organizations realized the symbiosis of their existences. What followed was a virtual marching band of support for Leah and her work at STS. When STS needed to get the word out, KFAC designed an “on the water clean up” over 14 miles of sound. When STS needed a platform to gather more supporters, KFAC was there with a stage, a microphone,and a tremendous crowd ready to listen. When STS needed promotion during a crucial state senate vote, KFAC rallied its 10,000 donors to flood the capital with expressions of concern. And when STS needed financial resources to back up Leah, KFAC was there with five figure support, year after year.

Was is most amazing, perhaps, is that all of this was started with nothing, and done for love: One simple bet, and a few guys redirecting the proceeds to charity became an annual tradition along the Sound.

It’s now hard to fathom that KFAC has always been an entirely volunteer organization which somehow fields a crew of 500 committed souls every year to manage the logistics of a modern day Normandy with a beach party at the end. The leadership and organizational talents of this group are stunning. People like Shirleen Dubuque and Steve Showalter organize provisions, supplies and people with sublime, 11th hour hijinx. Kim Beaumont at DownUnder and Dave Haddox from Purdue have likely trained hundreds of kayakers to be safe enough to make the voyage. Tad Jones worked stage miracles for years, packing thousands of people into legendary beach parties that rallies the troops around the charities. Patrick Sikes was a master magician at logistics. Amy Rule and Kathy Foreman wrangle hundreds of volunteers to do undesirable work details at unmentionable hours. And Adam Uhrynowski and Brian Russell have this magic touch capturing the whole thing on film for us to replay over and again in the long winter months of  frozen water.

All of this energy was harnessed and directed to something good, for years on end. And then last week…

“In sending a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requesting to vacate their certificates, Broadwater has signaled that their proposed floating gas plant is finally dead,” said Leah Schmalz. “Eight years ago, the citizens of Connecticut and New York recognized that this proposed project was not good for our environment or our livelihood,” Schmalz said. “It took years of fighting, partnering with federal and state officials on both sides of Long Island Sound, but now we can say that the health and safety of our Sound will not be compromised by the proposed industrial complex.” More here

Years ago, another KFAC treasure named Morley quoted Pete Seeger  in “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” from the stage, as she had witnessed KFAC grow from dozens to hundreds and then thousands.

I’ve been surprised by some good things happening in my lifetime. Sometimes quite suddenly.

Imagine a big see-saw, with a basketful of rocks sitting on one end. That end is down on the ground. At the other end, up in the air, is a basket half full of sand. Some of us are trying to fill it, using teaspoons. Most folks laugh at us. “Don’t you know the sand is leaking out even as you put it in?”

We say, that’s true, but we’re getting more people with teaspoons all the time. One of these days that basket of sand will be full up and you’ll see this whole see-saw just tip the opposite way. People will say, “Gee, how did it happen so suddenly?”

Us, and our little teaspoons.

Leah Schmalz is now working on controlling emissions and ecoli bloom from the Bridgeport harbor. Kayak for a Cause launches for its twelfth year on July 21th. And Long Island Sound is that much nicer because they do what they do.

No, they don't.

It’s been said 2012 will be the year of Social Media in Business; for the meta travel site KAYAK, it couldn’t come soon enough.

While some businesses are evolving or even transforming how they buy and sell products, many are fast becoming social businesses. In a Fast Company article by Drew Neisser, “Move Over Social Media; Here Comes Social Business” he explains the reasons why every company should be thinking about becoming a social business. According to Neisser, IBM is moving themselves and their clients “well beyond social media into a new era of collaboration, insight sharing and lead generation it calls social business”.

It only takes one disaster, and the whole company focusses on getting social media right.

So big news this week was KAYAK pulled some ads from TLC recently on a previously under the radar show called “All-American Muslim”. In fact, seems 65 other advertisers have done the same, including Lowes. None cited any reason for pulling ads, and so the logical media man assumes it was for underperformance. Advertisers advertise because they are in business. They want to reach customers and have a finite marketing budget to do it.

KAYAK is a small entrepreneurial company, the type that we need badly in America. Unfortunately, KAYAK’s explanation came out in the form of a (likely) hastily written blog post from the CMO right out of the classic Gas-on-the-fire PR strategy. It starts with a typo (as I often do as well), and rambles just enough to contradict between backing a show for moral reasons and pulling out for performance reasons. I’ve written worse. (full disclosure: I know the CEO and have shared beers on occaision).

Here’s that first post:

We would like to apologize to anyone who was offended by how we handled our decision not to continue advertising on All-American Muslim when it
returns in January. We decided to advertise on it in the first place because we  adamantly support tolerance and diversity. Our 150-person team includes people
from all over the world, and from all walks of life. Our team includes people who are descended from early Europeans who came here escaping religious
intolerance, and newer Americans who include many religions. We get what America is about.

For the record, we didn’t “pull” our ads. Our ads kept running on this program, but we have made the decision not to give TLC more money when the show returns in January.

Unfortunately, this decision comes across as bending to bigotry. It also appears that we did not support people who deserve support as people and as Americans. For that, I am profoundly sorry.

I should have communicated more clearly. We would not want anyone to think that we caved to hatred. I wish I could share some of the emails I’ve received from our team. They are also very unhappy with how I handled this. Please allow me to explain the decision. First, our approach to advertising decisions is to choose advertising based on who watches it, not the political leaning of the program.

When we decided to give our money to TLC for this program, we deemed the show a worthy topic. When we received angry emails regarding our decision to advertise, I looked into the show more thoroughly. The first thing I discovered was that TLC was not upfront with us about the nature of this show. As I said, it’s a worthy topic, but any reasonable person would know that this topic is a particular lightning rod. We believe TLC went out of their way to pick a fight on this, and they didn’t let us know their intentions. That’s not a business practice that generally gets repeat business from us. I also believe that it did this subject a grave disservice. Sadly, TLC is now enjoying the attention from this controversy.

I then checked the Florida Family Association website to see how this was portrayed. Besides the regrettable hatred, I also noticed that we weren’t listed. The email was a template, so people who sent thousands of emails seemed to be unaware they were sending it to us. The amount of vitriol in the emails was saddening, but I didn’t exactly feel pressured (not to mention we wouldn’t bend to such pressure). Many of the emails I’ve received expressing disappointment in our decision have been much more civil, and I applaud you for that.

Lastly, I watched the first two episodes. Mostly, I just thought the show sucked. Based on our dealings with TLC and the simple assessment of the show, I decided we should put our money elsewhere. Apologies again.

- Robert Birge, KAYAK Chief Marketing Officer

But then social and traditional media kicked in, picking apart the post and accusing the company of pandering to religious groups (who pointed out, correctly, the show had no bomb makers). This, to them, implied TLC was going light on Islam and they called for support to be pulled. Meanwhile, support was being pulled, likely for entirely different reasons- economics. But I think the big lesson learned is that businesses are beginning to wade into social media, and they have to get a handle on the tremendous benefits and swift dangers of living in that world. As for KAYAK, the best thing they can do in this Holiday season is to focus. Sure enough, this clarification just came out from CEO Steve Hafner.

This is actually my first blog post ever. Frankly, I wish it was on a different topic.

I want to respond to the questions and comments we’ve been receiving about KAYAK’s advertising on the TLC show “All-American Muslim”. We’re a small company with fewer than 200 employees, and we advertise on a lot of TV shows. We don’t have the resources to vet the content of each show. We also continually adjust our media mix – meaning we start, stop,  and restart advertising on specific shows periodically.

Our decision regarding advertising on All-American Muslim was in no way influenced by demands from third parties such as the FFA. We do try to avoid advertising on shows that may produce controversy, whether we support the content or not. We simply don’t want people to confuse our choice of where we spend our TV dollars with a political or moral agenda. Plus there are plenty of shows that are just as effective from a marketing perspective.

We’re not bigots, and we’re not experts in TV programming. We are trying to make the world’s best travel site. I hope this blog post puts this issue to rest and allows us to get back to work.

Please enjoy the holiday season. Steve Hafner

 Simple, focussed and to the point. Good CEO reaction.