Stilgherrian » techcrunch

Arrington takes the biscuit

Stilgherrian — Mon, 26 May 2008 03:08:31 +0000

Michael Arrington has written the best article ever on TechCrunch. That is all. As you were.

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Crikey: Australia’s web 2.0 wipeout on the wave of the future

Stilgherrian — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:34:26 +0000

[Note: This is a slightly edited version of an article I wrote for Crikey this morning. The main difference is a bit more linkage. There's more CeBIT / Transaction 2.0 material to come.]

In 1980 futurist Alvin Toffler wrote The Third Wave. Following the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, he said, we’re now experiencing the Third Wave, or what might be called post-industrial society. Australia’s surfing prowess means nothing here, though. We’re still pissing in the shallows, barely held up by leaking floaties.

Why is tech-literate, well-educated Australia so bad at marketing and profiting from its own innovation, from the fisheye lens to gene shears? We do innovate, you know.

“Australians expect the government to do everything for them — but the government’s clueless,” explained journalist and evangelist Duncan Riley at yesterday’s Transaction 2.0 conference. “The Australia 2020 Summit is a classic example. The Internet was seen as an ‘emerging’ industry. Emerging? We’ve had it for 20 years! In the US alone it employs 7 million people.”

Riley, a one-time Howard government staffer, has successfully created his own internet start-ups. Until recently he wrote for Web 2.0 bible TechCrunch. Now he runs The Inquisitr.

“Why would you invest in some Internet business when there’s no tax advantage?” he asks. “If you want to make a movie you get tax benefits. If I had a farm I’d be a millionaire by now, there’s so many special benefits.”

Riley isn’t impressed with Australia’s broadband plans: a 12Mb/sec network by 2012 when, as Crikey has reported, others already do 100Mb/sec. “We’re still stuck in the dark ages,” he says. “Once we get this always-on culture, once we get the iPhone next month we’ll finally, hopefully, get unlimited data plans, Dear God!”

Compare Australia to Israel…

With a third of the population, Israel generates 10 times as many start-ups. “Israel is the second largest contributor of companies to NASDAQ after the US,” says Israeli-born Gilad Greenbaum, Director of IT for conference organisers Hannover Fairs Australia. “In the Tel Aviv – Herzelya – Natalia triangle alone [with a population the same as Adelaide] there are 3000 technology companies.” They’re not supporting the boom. They’re 3000 businesses with their own tech to sell.

Riley is frustrated at Australian businesses’ ignorance — even those attending Sydney’s massive CeBIT trade show. “I walked out there today and said ‘Web 2.0′ and ‘Google Docs’ and people just stared at me blankly.”

Meanwhile watch out for GoodBarry and their everything-for-business-online service. Winning “Best Aussie Business 2.0 Start-Up” yesterday, they’ve just opened an office in San Fran and were last seen talking to venture capitalist Jason Calacanis. An American.

[Disclosure: I attended CeBIT and Transaction 2.0 as a guest of Hannover Fairs Australia.]

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Links for 30 April 2008

del.icio.us — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:08:20 +0000

Here are the web links I’ve found over the last few days, posted a bit later than I’d intended. Cope.

Dissociative Identity Disorder | Wikipedia: This is what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. I'm reading about it because a friend was recently so diagnosed.
End Of Speculation: The Real Twitter Usage Numbers | TechCrunch: Michael Arrington's article begins: “Speculation about Twitter’s new round of financing is leading everyone to speculate on Twitter’s actual penetration into the “mainstream”, or lack thereof.
Upside Down Text Generator: A silly utility for turning text upside down. Fun for all the family. ??u??p ?s?l ???? p?? ???? ?ou plno?s ?ll??? ? [OK, so it doesn't work in this cross-feed.]
ACMA Communications Report 2006-07: The Australian communications & Media Authority's annual report to parliament. The numbers aren't as recent as they could be, but still lots of good data.
A Visit to Beijing's Exclusive Penis Restaurant | Spiegel Online: A specialist restaurant serves painstakingly decorated gourmet meals made only from the naughty bits.
Learning to Live Like an Early Bird | WSJ.com: Tips for turning a night person into a morning person. I'm already a morning person, but I know people who could use this…

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Oh, I’m a heavy user of Twitter

Stilgherrian — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:56:27 +0000

TechCrunch has some figures on Twitter usage. It seems my own Twitterings at 16+ a day makes me a “heavy” user.

March 2008
Total Users: 1+ million
Total Active Users: 200,000 per week
Total Twitter Messages: 3 million/day

What’s most interesting is the rabid Twitter usage by active users — they send an average of 15 Twitter message per day.

My Twitter stats show that my usage is spread across my waking hours right across the week. Yes, Twitter has become a core communication tool — though I’ve said that before [1, 2]. Maybe you should follow me.

[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh's cartoons published online, it's free to use.]

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CeBIT Australia just FOAD, OK?

Stilgherrian — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:49:41 +0000

Hannover Fairs, the organisers of the CeBIT Australia IT trade show, must be shitting themselves about poor ticket sales or something. They certainly seem desperate.

These guys are spammy at the best of times, sending at least one email a week every week. But this year I’ve received three “Exclusive Limited Offer: Free Exhibition Entry” emails this month alone, plus today another one via the Australian Computer Society — yeah, that’s fuckin’ exclusive, eh? They’ve emailed a “Dear Bloggers” media release and phoned. Gawd!

I was underwhelmed last year and annoyed with the marketing wank-words.

Do these shows actually achieve anything any more? I mean, if you’ve got a new IT product you just tell TechCrunch and the geek world’s blogosphere of feral goldfish do the rest, right? Why herd everyone into a room, except to fuel an industry of hangers-on who make t-shirts and lame promotional giveaways?

[P.S. I am actually going. If nothing else I can collect some high-grade sarcasm for my podcast. But enough with the spam already, Hannover!]

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Jason Calacanis and the Evil Cult of the Internet Start-up

Stilgherrian — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:27:09 +0000

I’m still chuckling at the seriousness with which some people treat getting onto Techmeme. It’s true, I keep stopping typing to giggle. It’s embarrassing.

I’d never visited Techmeme until this weekend. Even then it was only because someone told me I’d blipped up there. It’s just another feed of what someone thinks is “important” in infotech, yeah? Who cares. It’s not as if it’s Reuters or BBC News.

It’s just more geeks telling geeks what geeks think other geeks should think about stuff that geeks think about.

But Jason Calacanis cares.

Jason Calacanis must care very deeply because he “joked” about it on this website, and over at TechCrunch he “joked” about getting pageviews. His fan club speculates that Duncan Riley and me and others are only attacking him to generate our own web traffic. Well, I can’t speak for Duncan, but no, I couldn’t care less about website traffic — especially the low-grade drive-by flamers that usually wash up here after being mentioned on high-traffic fan sites. That’s not why I’m here.

I’m attacking Calacanis because I reckon the business style he describes, the one championed by his defenders, is rotten to the very core.

But first, let’s talk about religion…

The Cult of the Internet Start-up

Attracting attention and scoring pageviews is very, very important to these guys — and for good reason. They’re fully indoctrinated into the Cult of the Internet Start-up. They must generate The Buzz.

Let us now read from their gospel…

… 19 Soon, our Labours will have produced The Beta. We shall ready ourselves to supplicate Our Great Saviour the Venture Capitalist. 20 He shall ask, “Doth thy Beta have The Buzz?” 21 If it does have The Buzz, He will see that It is Good, and He shall writeth The Cheque. 22 And there shall be much rejoicing.

23 And then cometh the Second Phase wherein — praise be to The Great Saviour! — we shall write the IPO. 24 If we still have The Buzz, the Shares shall Rise, and the land will overfloweth with milk and honey. 25 And there shall be much rejoicing…

Internet Start-upers are fundamentalists. Anyone who doesn’t follow their pathway of monomaniacal self-sacrifice (read: high-risk workaholism) in pursuit of the Nirvana of the successful IPO is branded a Slacker, even by The Prophet.

The Cultists truly believe that the faster-faster-VC-to-IPO chase to these glorious riches is the right and proper thing to do — and like all zealots, they think the ends justify the means.

Note also Bill Moore’s comment. “A few million (or 10s of millions, max) dollars a year” and being “very comfortable” isn’t enough for him. He talks a bit about “industry changing”, but soon gets back to the money, complaining if he’d get “only” 15% of $100M.

That’s 15 million dollars, Bill!

There’s a word to describe that.

Greed.

If you’re on an average US, Australian or European wage, you’re already richer than 99% of the planet. But forget the top 1%. Even being in the top 0.01% isn’t enough, it seems. And anyone who isn’t this filthy greedy, anyone who isn’t prepared to treat people as disposable, exploitable objects along the way, is a “wimp” or a “wannabe”.

“There’s a Pig Loose in the Mosque! Sooooooooooooeeeeee!”

This discussion is heated because we’re not talking about subtly different ways of doing business here. We’re challenging the Cult’s core tenets. That greed is good. That the ideal is to grow fast and cash out, not build something of lasting value. That it’s just fine to burn people out along the way — collateral damage, I guess. That it doesn’t matter if your life is totally out of balance now because it’ll all sort itself out later.

Magically.

Somehow.

A few years ago I was discussing a couple of Internet start-up concepts with a well-respected VC-savvy adviser who paused and said:

You do realise you’ll be doing business with evil people? They don’t care about anything other than the return on their investment. As long as you deliver that, it’s fine. Just remember, though, they are evil.

The Cult of the Internet Start-up is evil. It’s selfish. It’s inhuman It’s amoral. Using the term “work ethic” to describe driving (or seducing) people into appallingly long work hours to the neglect of family and community and even self is disgusting.

This “grow now, worry about the consequences later” attitude is precisely the greedy, short-term thinking which has driven the world to the edge of an environmental disaster. But who cares, eh? You got your $100M — all of it! Leave someone else to clear up that mess, and plough on to the next “world-changing idea”.

Assuming you don’t die of a heart attack first.

Assuming you have a heart.

Calacanis’ original post exhibited the language of exploitation. Petty bean-counting to suck every last productive hour out of the meat-assets. He changed that wording quick smart, eh? But did he change his attitude?

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington did a beautifully-written follow-up — though really the message was standard advice for any business: (1) hire the right people, and (2) don’t waste money, but avoid being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Some of Calacanis’ points were probably written in haste, like his statement “Fire people who are not workaholics” (he later changed it to “Fire people who don’t love their work”). Others were not controversial, like his advice to “Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs.” Overall, I get the impression that if he had spent just a few minutes editing his post, he would have had a 100% different reaction from readers.
Agreed. The reaction wouldn’t have been as sharp. But changing the surface PR spin is just spraying perfume to cover the underlying stench.

Arrington exhibits the same exploitative signs in a later comment.

“And I totally agree with you that for x duration you can work someone to death but the person needs to understand what happens once x duration is completed. There has to be downtime.”

No, they don’t need to understand that. Think of them as a goldfish. Goldfish will eat everything you give them until their little stomachs explode (or so I hear). The key isn’t to find a goldfish that knows when to stop eating. They key is to know when to stop feeding the goldfish, for their own good.

Once again, it’s about treating your staff as objects to be manipulated at your whim. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

“If you’re not like us, you’re a loser”

This is not the only way of starting a new business. It’s just one specific model — about fast growth and high risk. Without a doubt, it can sometimes produce astounding results. It can also crash spectacularly, leaving no survivors.

You can also build a business calmly, rationally, with solid foundations — and with respect for the people and world around you. A business which can weather the storms because the captain has a clear view from the bridge, accurate maps and a firm hand on the wheel — as well as a dedicated crew, of course.

Calacanis has been more measured since he encountered the criticism of his original post, but he’s still condescending when comparing the fundamentalist Cult approach to the truly enlightened 37signals.

You haven’t raised tons of money and you’re building a “lifestyle” business from what I gather (correct?) You’re not trying to displace Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. You’re not trying to build a service that gets to 100M monthly users, and you’re not on some aggressive timeline. You’re trying to build something that you enjoy working on and that helps people… correct?

When you take VC money and try to compete in a really aggressive space like search/research you’re faced with folks like Google, Wikipedia, about.com, Yahoo, eHow, DMOZ , etc. These are big companies with lots of resources… the way you beat them is to zig where they zag and/or out hustle them. So, if you want to compete in that space you’re gonna need to really work hard — you’re not going to do it working a four hour work week that’s for sure!

I’ll gloss over the fact that one of his differentiators is that 37signals is trying to build something “that helps people”, compared to his megalomaniacal goal of “displace Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc”. 37signals’ David Heinemeier Hansson quite rightly takes exception to all this.

[W]e’re not building a “lifestyle” business. We’re just building a business. To take the sound bytes [sic] from the recent Wired article, a multimillion dollar one that doubled in revenues last year…

So please don’t make the choices we’ve made about treating our employees one of a “lifestyle” (aka “small timer”, “toy”) vs “real” business. That somehow only those happy hippies who are not going for the gold can afford to hire whole people with a life outside of work. That’s bullcrap.

I very much do believe, though, that taking VC money with loads of strings attached will put hard pressures and increased stress on the decision making. And that in turn can lead to a culture where long hours and no walking outside for coffee can be seen as good, patriotic practices.

What I take the most offence to, though, is the dichotomist split between the workaholic go-getters who gets the quick cash and the lame waiting-in-line nine-to-fivers who get a gold watch after 30 years. What a crock.

We launched Basecamp four years ago. We built it off a 10 hour/week technical time budget. It’s very possible to build a “real”, multimillion dollar business that has high growth without resorting to the workaholic path.

Mr Calacanis, failing to comprehend that there are paths other than your own is fundamentalism. Even when you pretend to accept that there are alternatives — but still wrap your words in condescension.

Cult Myth #1: “It’s OK, I choose to work this way”

No it’s not OK. If you’re immersed in one specific highly-focussed environment for almost your entire waking life, then your decisions will not be made with a sense of perspective. You are not what DHH calls “a whole person”.

Vast slabs of the social fabric which informs good long-term, ethical decisions simply won’t be on your radar.

And then there’s the guys who say, “Well, I can work 16 hours a day for 7 days a week and it doesn’t do me any harm.” Well bully for you. I bet your dick’s bigger than mine too, eh? This isn’t a contest to see who’s the biggest martyr. It’s about who can achieve the most, not suffer the most.

Remember, Patty Hearst was there “voluntarily” too.

Cult Myth #2: “This is what makes America great”

This is the most toxic myth of all — wrapping your obsession in the flag.

No, this attitude is what makes America look like it’s populated by arseholes. Ignorant, arrogant, self-righteous, self-centred arseholes who consume everything in sight and dump their crap on the rest of the world under the delusion that their way is the best and only way. A nation that only now is starting to realise the mess it’s in.

What actually made America great — past tense — was the visionary foresight of its founders, the political geniuses who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. At the time they knew they were creating some special — not just for the moment, but for all time.

God Bless America.

She’d better, because a clear-headed America will be needed to help face the challenges of the future — the very near future. And an America retreating into medievalism and stubborn arrogance is not what the world needs.

Fighting the Good Fight

So, this is why I refer to Jason Calacanis as a prick. His ill-thought-out wording in an essay intended to convey good advice — and some of it is good advice, let’s not forget! — exposed this smelly underlying attitude of winner-take-all exploitation and devil take the hindmost.

I strongly believe this to be a dangerous, toxic, anti-human attitude and it’s infecting others. It must be fought vigorously and with passion.

Calacanis and his defenders reckon that workaholic exploitation is the only way to “change the world”. It’s not. There’s also clarity of vision, a really good idea, and well-planned execution. It’s the difference between beating one’s opponent with serried ranks of massed foot-soldiers, or using snipers.

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A Pause in the Jason Calacanis discussion

Stilgherrian — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:27:23 +0000

A note for folks stumbling across this website thanks to the Jason Calacanis / 37signals / TechCrunch discussion: It’s 4.30pm on a sunny autumn Sunday afternoon here in Sydney. I have been writing a further post which explains, amongst other things, that I’m not trolling (deliberately stirring up controversy), but passionately arguing a genuine concern. I’m amused this has turned into a global controversy, flattered even, when I reckon it’s more a storm in a teacup — though at its heart is a fundamental issue about how we do business. However for the next few hours I’ll be enjoying the remaining sunshine, doing some shopping and generally spending Sunday evening with my beloved. More soon.

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Well, I wanted some profile before Australia 2020…

Stilgherrian — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:54:30 +0000

[Update 10 March, 1030 AEDT: I've written a follow-up article which, while bound to piss off a few people, explains precisely why I'm so concerned about this issue.]

…but I don’t know whether this was exactly what I had in mind. Calling a high-profile Internet entrepreneur a prick, and then being referenced by some of the highest-traffic tech blogs on the planet.

OK, I participated in the discussion at TechCrunch and the 37signals blog Signal vs Noise, as I should. But then it was picked up by Mashable and then TechMeme (see screenshot). And now I’m seeing inbound from TechCrunch Japan and Colbert Low’s technology blog and who knows where else to come.

Jason Calacanis has edited his original post in face of the fallout:

Fire people who ~~are not workaholics.~~ don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, ~~it’s not a game~~. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it — go work at the post office or stabucks [sic] if you’re not into it ~~you want balance in your life. For realz.~~

He’s also posted an explanatory piece. My take on that: lots of good words, but in my experience the words that people blurt out first are closest to what they really believe.

If an employer can’t tell the difference between passion and being a workaholic, or if he blurts out critical policies without thinking about the language he’s using and how people might respond, then he’s a dangerous employer. Working the way Calicanis suggests has serious long-term health impacts, and in some places is illegal.

Should I have called Calacanis a “prick”?

I don’t see why not. I’d certainly call him that to his face, if we were discussing this issue. It’s my honest opinion. Sure, I know nothing about him except his writing today and the way he’s responding to the criticism. But hey, I figure both he and I have been in the public media space for a long time and we’re both used to worse.

However he wants to smudge it over after the fact, what Calicanis said was that he’d only employ people who work in conditions which are dangerous to their health. I’m certainly glad he doesn’t have kids, ‘cos he’d probably have them in the coal mines by age 5.

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Afghanistan: death for downloading and discussing

Stilgherrian — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:55:27 +0000

Over at TechCrunch, Australian journalist Duncan Riley tells the story of a 23-year-old Afghani who’s been sentenced to death in a secret trial for discussing a document he found on the Internet.

Sayad Parwez Kambaksh’s crime was printing a document… that allegedly “violated the tenets of Islam.” Kambaksh then allegedly took the printout to Balkh University, where he discussed the contents with his teacher and classmates, resulting in a complaint to the US-backed Government.

Duncan asks:

What exactly are Americans and coalition forces (including British and Australian troops) fighting for in Afghanistan again? Feel free to remind me in the comments.

And the comments have gone beserk, even for TechCrunch. I’ll share some of it with you ‘cos someone who read my own comment emailed me privately to call me a genius and say that following the link to my website, i.e. here, was the best decision he ever made! Poor chap.

Here’s what I said:

We’re fighting for the security of an oil transportation path from Central Asia southwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean, so all the profits from massive as-yet-untapped oilfields go to the English-speaking empire. Otherwise those lovely, lovely petroleum products might go north through Russia where those awful Communists will profit, or east through China and they’re even more beastly. A brief study of a decent terrain map of Central Asia shows that there’s only three possible routes which can be…

Sorry, there’s a sudden pain in my ear. Where was I? Oh yes.

We’re fighting for peace and democracy.

Internet entrepreneur Rehan Allah Wala added:

I came to write what Stilgherrian did on Comment 3, but I guess he already posted it.

I am from Pakistan, and they need the port of Gwadar in Pakistan. Next to bring the pipeline down to the port.

It is a specially-built port for this purpose. For those who think it’s a conspiracy theory, Google on Gwadar Pakistan.

And then it kicked off. Hit the comments link and scroll down for the fun. I added a few more comments, but I’ll probably stop now that the trolls are taking over.

My best wishes to ~~Rehan Allah Wala~~ Sayad Parwez Kambaksh and your family. I hope that concepts like “freedom of speech” and “freedom of thought” come to prevail in your country.

[Update 26 January 2008:I certainly wish Rehan Allah Wala no ill will, but I really intended my best wishes to go to the young man facing a death sentence for reading and discussing in idea.]

Stilgherrian » techcrunch

Arrington takes the biscuit

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Crikey: Australia’s web 2.0 wipeout on the wave of the future

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Links for 30 April 2008

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Oh, I’m a heavy user of Twitter

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CeBIT Australia just FOAD, OK?

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Jason Calacanis and the Evil Cult of the Internet Start-up

The Cult of the Internet Start-up

“There’s a Pig Loose in the Mosque! Sooooooooooooeeeeee!”

“If you’re not like us, you’re a loser”

Cult Myth #1: “It’s OK, I choose to work this way”

Cult Myth #2: “This is what makes America great”

Fighting the Good Fight

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A Pause in the Jason Calacanis discussion

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Well, I wanted some profile before Australia 2020…

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Afghanistan: death for downloading and discussing

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