The view from Science and technology park Rijeka

We have a great view from our new office, but the window design is horrible. But it did teach me the power of focus.

This morning I found out I can see the stadium from here. Why couldn’t I see it before? I’ve stared from that window at least a dozen times. Because this time I was sitting in a way that the window blocked most of the view.

Focusing and seeing something new

So, I focused my looking on the parts I could see. And taadaaa, stadium appears.

Lesson!
Sometimes in life and business you need to stop looking or doing at something in order to find or do something else. Although you may not think its not necessary to stop doing what you are doing, it is. Sometimes some new magical things will appear.

Ninety five percent of emails sent are too long. The ideal lenght is six sentences or fewer, and the message should contain no more than the following information: (1) why you are contacting the person; (2) who you are;(3) what your cause is;(4) what you want;(5) why the recipient should help you; and (6) what the next step is.

This was entirely copyed from The Book of Enchantment, by Guy Kawasaki, and if you want to read more great tips like this, you should read that book. The book is actually called “Enchantment”, but I think the other tittle has more epicness attached

I am a hard core believer of the “six sentence” rule, because most of the time (that matter something), I am writting emails to people that have over 10 unread emails, and a hundred more ini their inbox. And I understand how people value short, to the point, direct, well structured emails.

Sorry for any typos, I still didn’t check if there is an app for iPad that does spell checks. Feel free to recommend one to me in a six sentence email.

Now I have a great knowledge how and why Apple became a company that it is today. If you try to make a conclussion based on some articles on Wired, Techcrunch or any other for that matter, you will just scratch the surface! You will read the same story over and over again. Two best friends, one engineer and one salesman. This may be true but, there’s nothing revolutional you can do with that info.

Scratching the surface just isn’t enough! Washing your teeth once a day, and expecting them to be Aquafresh white, just isn’t possible! You need to get to the core! Articles don’t cover core, they give you white teeth in two weeks!

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but there is no easy win! Revolutions, insanely great products, millions-billions, don’t come easy.

To return to my title, Apple founders… In case you are wondering wich book is better, iWoz or Steve Jobs (by Isaacson), I have to say Steve Jobs. But I recommend that you read both to get a much better scope of the – WHY. It’s the WHY question that drives us. Why did the two Steves found a company? Why was first Apple computer such a huge success and especially Apple II. Why did the Macintosh start a revolution? Why Wozniak wasn’t CEO material? Why Jobs had 60% chance of turning around Apple in 1997 when they were dying? Why…

This wasn’t spellchecked, and english is not my matter tongue, so I apologize to my readers.

Paul Rand told Jobs, his price is 100.000,00 for making the logo. Jobs replied asking how many options would he receive for this amount of money. To this, Rand replied, he doesn’t do options. You have a problem, I will fix it, and you will pay. I won’t make any adjustments. You can use the logo or not, but you pay either way. When the logo was created, and presented to Jobs, he just stood up, and hugged Rand he was that impressed. Throughout the book its thoroughly explained how Jobs was not easy to satisfy.

However, Jobs had one remark for the logo. He wanted a different yellow on the letter e. To this Rand responded by smashing his fist on the table screaming he was 50 years in this business, and he knows how to do his job. Jobs agreed.

Addition:
What a coincidence! The Next Web just published an article (few videos included) about Jobs at Next (there’s a little bit about this topic as well). Perfect timing for my reading experience (Steve Jobs biography). Awesome…

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/11/20/watch-steve-jobs-brainstorm-with-the-next-team-in-this-fascinating-video/

Apple store interior

I kinda thought about the Apple store. Because they have the least cluttered store (just compare this to HP, or Sony brand store).

So anyway… Look at this picture and imagine… You enter a store. Aproach the table/desk/counter. There are devices to choose from (like iPod, iPhone, iPad). Just as it is now, there is one device open for testing (if you pull it the alarm goes off).

Plastic dome

Behind it, there is a plastic dome. Inside of that dome, there is a sealed box of the device you are testing. For example the iPad. When you decide to pay for the product, you swipe your credit card, or insert cash, confirm and the dome opens. When it opens you take the product. After a few moments, the dome closes and from beneath the counter a lift brings up fresh box version of that same product.

Naturally, there should be some personnel handling the security and refilling the stocks. I was more concerned about the sales process itself. For example if a potential customer wants to ask a particular question (how to connect the iPad to the Internet). Should there be a phone that’s connected to the switchboard, and there are few telephone operators answering the questions? I am not so sure that would work well, because phone support is, difficult, to say the least. Although 2-4 operators could handle support for 10-20 stores (instead the usual 2-4 salespeople per store).

Could this store easily be open 24-7? Should the sales process itself take place somewhere else? Somewhere where you can analyse and track everything? On some detail oriented website with videos, tutorials, Q&A, Forum, etc… Not sure…

If you think you are an expert on the subject, please tell me why do you think this idea would fail miserably

But I slowly moved away from the topic. So, Foursquare just didn’t catch so quick. I even asked myself at that time if Steve Jobs is using Foursquare? BTW, if someone knows the answer to that question I would appreciate it. But lets return to the topic.

Mr Mujević completely destroyed the business model of Foursqure (in lack of a better description and words). What do I mean by that? He checked in at several place in short spans (and received a badge for it) although he was still at his office. So the system works as long as you play by the rules (and the system trusts that you will). OK, nothing wrong with that. What I am concerned is the following scenario.

Foursquare team pitches their idea to the potential investor. The investor asks the question “Well what if I hack the system and check in into places I haven’t really visited?”. The Foursquare team answers, well you get the points, the badge, the discount regardless of that. And the investor gives the money anyway?

My partner Edi Budimilić (Co-owner of GEM Studio, and co-founder of WhoAPI) had an interesting counter remark. His opinion is that if the users decides to cheat the system it’s OK to reward him anyway. Let me explain in an example. User checks in places where he isn’t really present, and receives a discount for it. But he needs to do it 5 times in a week (which demands focus, thinking and planing about it) plus after all you become their buyer. Basically you are rewarding that, and according to Edi, that’s OK. Also, if you cheat the points system, you constantly notify your friends with irrelevant data, and sooner or later, your friends will get annoyed and remove you from their list. This way, you will cheat the system, but only you will know that you have a lot of points and rewards, which is pointless.

How do you feel about this?

Determination:
- the act of coming to a decision or of fixing or settling a purpose.
- the quality of being determined to do or achieve something
- the act of making up your mind about something

Presumption:
- bold or insolent behaviour or manners
- a belief or assumption based on reasonable evidence
- assumption of something as true.

Courage
- the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; aka bravery.
- mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty

Commitment
- the act of committing, pledging, or engaging oneself.
- an obligation, promise, etc. that restricts one’s freedom of action

Discipline
- training to act in accordance with rules;
- activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill;
- behavior in accord with rules of conduct; behavior and order maintained by training and control

Patience
- the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like.
- an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay

Then it got me thinking. They must have traveled from very far away. I saw the horizon in the distance, and I thought, the must have swimmed from all the way out there. Wow, such great distance. But, it’s not a problem for them, and they don’t need a car to travel great distance. They are home where ever they go. They have food along all the way. They can sleep where ever they want. Just like Smith said it in the Matrix, they form natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. Only thing that presents danger for them most of the times, are we, the humans.

We need a car to go somewhere. We need to build houses for our shelter, and we need to grow/buy food to survive. And we have to cook it most of the time. When you put it that way, that don’t sound like much of a mammal to me. OK, now I sound like Agent Smith. But nevertheless one can argue that this hypotheses has logical meaning. OK, now I sound like Spock…

Look around you. We are changing our planet, and we are not improving it. We are a disease! And we don’t have to be! We can evolve, we can change for better! We are intelligent, and our intellect has to overcome the negative aspects, the sooner, the better. I know, you probably hate me know, and disagree. But you are fundamentally wrong, and you probably take every resource on this planet for granted. And after you use all the resource, you will die like the worm, and you have proven that your intelligence is equal to that of a worm, and you are equally hopeless.

Or, you can change the way you think. You can become a better Earth inhabitant. Help other species on this planet, including your own race. Will you?

The view

- To get your attention, first thing is first. We were on HRT (Croatian national television). We got a great review of about 3 minutes.

- Before that, (and this is not the reason why the TV crew came to visit us) we won on startUPweb among 19 contenders with our WhoAPI startup

- We published our free iPhone app CroDNS, check it ou app.crodns.com (you can check domain availability with it) and it’s using WhoAPI to deliver the whois information.

- We published my latest white paper “Šibica za vatreni marketing” which translates to “Match for fire marketing”, it had 150 downloads in first 2 days thanks to an article on rep.hr and our subscribe list.

- On top of “Šibica za vatreni marketing” we have new hosting packages or better to say online marketing packages. They are look pretty neat, they are meant to improve sales after a slow May (which is to bad, since March and April were both all time records).

Vatreni paket GEM Studio

- Thanks to our partners at Studio Iconis we have a cover for games we developed back in the days we were into game development. We will give them away for free to every hosting purchase.

GEM Studio games

- Still working on that secret weapon
- I have another secret side pet project
- In my next blog post I will come clean with my blog readers, and I will let you know about both
- We had our first paying customer on WhoAPI
- I started reading Outliers by Malcom Gladwell, PR in a jar, and Ultimate guide to Adwords by Perry Marshall

Outliers by Malcom Gladwell

Ultimate guide to Google Adwords by Perry Marshall, PR in a Jar

I was at the CEED conference, where I met Sandi Češko, Paul Brageil, Rohit Talwar, Oliver Holle, Nina Mazgan, Damir Sabol and many more veeeery interesting people! Videos of speakers and panel discussions

As you can see, it’s been a busy few weeks. Still no millions on bank account, any suggestion what I am doing wrong?

- published new gemstudio.hr
- record hosting sales
- dozen bloggers blogged about white papers I wrote
- WhoAPI is advancing nicely
- started developing a secret weapon, sorry I cant discuss about it
- had 2 guest lectures (first time in my life) in renowned IT school
- making a dvd box with 14 freeware games (which we developed 5-10 years ago) that we will send for free to our hosting clients
- mater of days till publishing our first iPhone app “CroDNS”
- mater of days till publishing my newest white paper