Likes & Launch
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Caring is about giving time. It can mean putting time into it, going to visit a friend, showing up, or listening when someone needs an outlet. Caring can mean saving time too, running an errand for someone, making a meal for them so they don’t have to cook. So when thinking about how to scale caring, the biggest limiting factor is time.
Awhile back my colleague Alexander started hacking on the Gmail API. He was building some great tools for USV. He built some cool things and he’s continued to build new ways to better manage the inefficient and mundane in the inbox.
I threw out the idea about a better introduction machine. To create a little bot to take the email introductions and make them less painful on both sides: the introducer, the introducee (hardly a real word) and the person who wants to connect. He kicked it around and within a few days had an early prototype of BrittBot.
The premise of BrittBot was that you could make an introduction one direction allowing the receiver to opt in by clicking a “yes, introduce me” hyperlink. That would create a new email introducing the introducee to the person who wants to connect, the introducer (me) would be BCC’d to know the connection went through.
Early on, I usually only utilized the tool for external connections. More for the ‘long shot’ introductions. A person who I didn’t know well who wanted to connect with someone in our portfolio. That put the power in their hands to say yes to the introduction or not with no 'guilt’. I was excited because it made introductions really seamless for them, they didn’t even need to create a new email.
The tool got a lot of positive response. “Wow this is so great how can I get an introduction bot?” “Cool - that’s like magic!” A win in inbox efficiency! More power to the people I saw it.
Now, when I shared the premise with some my colleagues, they had different reactions. They thought that the reason the introduction emails are meaningful is because you actually have to go through the manual process of writing, then making sure the person says yes and then creating a new email. They saw that exact amount of work, that extra bit of inbox pain, was part of what made the introduction powerful.
Now, when thinking of the tool, I thought the opposite. I saw it as the email introduction bot, though used sparingly, respected the introducee’s time. They were in control of their own time and could accept with little effort, or simply ignore it. It was a way to care about them through efficiency, not effort.
I’ve thought a lot about how to scale caring. I’ve spent time face-to-face with 1,000 different people from the USV portfolio last year alone. I care about each one of them. I want to know what they’re working on and how they’re doing, but I’m unable to give as much time to each person as I’d like. Technology enables me to gain more time to do the work to support everyone, the trick is finding the line between giving more time back vs. putting more time in.
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I’ve been working on a longer post (maybe too long) on scaling caring in a VC community. If you’ve found things that work for you, I’d love to learn more. Drop me a note on Twitter, @br_ttany or leave a comment on Disqus.
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[– Special deal, join ClassPass, get $50, I’ll give $50 to Defy Ventures –
Update 3/8: We raised $150 for Defy Ventures!]
Last night I learned it was more ‘Bhangra-like’ to use your fingers in a thumb-to-fingers clap motion, “imagine you’re flicking an apple off of a tree”, than hold your fingers straight up with a wrist twist, referred to many as “turning the lightbulb”.
I’m not a regular at Bhangra & Bollywood Dance class by any means. This was my second time ever taking a Bhangra dance class. I’m a long way for this but at least I have few new moves.
Would I do it again? Sure! I was joined by three friends and it was a ton of fun. Would I go every week? Maybe not.
The great news is, with ClassPass, I can decide how often I want to go back without fear of missing out on a ‘package discount’ for buying X number of classes that would need to be used by Y date.
I’ve been singing the praises of ClassPass since I joined in October. I quit my monthly gym membership and instead take classes at different workout studios throughout the city. I’ve recruited a number of friends already and they’re hooked. Currently, for $99/month you get unlimited access to their 200+ gyms in NYC as well as the ability to take classes in their other markets (including SF which is great for my regular trips to the west coast USV portfolio). From ballet to spin, boxing to crossfit, dance to parkour. They have it all.
I’m not employed by the company nor are we investors. I’m simply a huge fan and have $50 for you if you join too — more info below. With great enthusiasm for product, I’ve had some questions about how the business will grow, sustain and live in harmony with the studios it helps promote.
Bucking the gym business model
I quit my monthly gym membership to use ClassPass in exchange. Health Club business models are largely subsidized by individuals who pay each month but rarely use the facilities. Contracts with high cancellation fees cover the labor costs, depreciation on machines, and upfront equipment investment.
Gyms focus on signing up new members, and ideally would find the right mix of individuals who want to use the gym at different times or not at all. They have limited capacity at peak times, so some have become more dynamic to charge access for non-peak-hours. Access to multiple locations is usually another add on. Personal training and other services can be layered on top. That’s the extent of dynamic pricing.
That means, if you go once a month or thirty times a month, you’ll pay the same price for the majority of the service. Less frequent members subsidize the more frequent ones.
Through ClassPass, you currently pay one fee for unlimited classes per month. This is the same model that gym memberships employ. It’s easy to charge but it may be missing additional value that can be captured. As a consumer, I hope they don’t put in tiered pricing for frequency of use, but they very easily could. They already track the quantity of classes you take and count them on a monthly basis.
Additional layered services could be earlier access to book classes or a “spending per month” that could cover costs like renting spin shoes or extra towels at gyms that offer those upgrades.
Will studios win or lose?
ClassPass limits 3 visits per month to a particular gym. That means if you find a class you want to go to twice every week, you can’t do it. If you discover a class you love, you can take the steps to setup a membership with that studio directly. You can keep your ClassPass membership as well or cancel it and just commit to the ones you want.
The alternative is to arrange some clever hacking to build a schedule that allows you to max at your 3x classes at your favorite gyms and then find close supplements for other days. If you want to spin 2x a week each month, you need to find 4 studios with classes you like. Or if you travel for work, it may mean finding 3x studios in NYC and 1x in SF to use. That’s a bit more work and a bit more to keep track of. If you find a class you absolutely love, it’s probably work committing with them directly.
Does this model work better for studios or worse? Does it cannibalize business from individuals who would normally pay $10-$35/class to come 3-4 times a month? Or does it expand their market. Since they can reach more people, do they raise more awareness and ultimately sell more memberships directly? Does ClassPass make the pie of ‘class-takers’ larger so all boats rise?
Discovery of new studios was limited to word-of-mouth, foursquare, Gilt City, and online promotion. It would be a fair bit of work to sign up for the different classes, compare prices, and commit. On top of that, most of the studios are small businesses. Their pricing could be confusing. $100 for 10x classes or $150 for 20x if you use in the first three months. First class free or first week unlimited for $10. They would want to sell you so early in the process that it could be distracting from just figuring out whether the classes and schedule would fit.
The discovery wasn’t great or easy. That may be a win for the studios as switching costs were high, but a loss for new studios with little clout.
Margins and monetization
ClassPass doesn’t rent any studio space, nor do they supply free weights or mini trampolines. They are the information layer that connects the physical studios. I don’t know the intimate details of their monetization, but I know they currently only charge $99/month for members. That money likely goes largely to the studios and a small take rate is used to cover development costs, a sales team and operations.
How much money does a studio get? If a member goes to 20 classes a month and only pays $99, and let’s say ClassPass takes 10% which would include the credit card transaction fee, that would mean at most (with $10 going to Classpass) the studio would get $4.50 per class. That’s pittance compared to the $10-$35 they may charge for each class.
Now, $4.50 may not be much, but it may make sense for the studio. Once a class kicks off, it’s a fixed cost. Whether there are 2 people in the class or 40, the instructor, rent and equipment is already paid for. If a studio is able to increase utilization for each class, the additional students, at any price, are worth taking. Now, they need to consider costs like depreciation on equipment for that additional student, like a spin bike, and the impact on experience for other attendees who are paying full price and expecting access to showers, enough floorspace, etc.
Studios would just have to make sure that financially, filling more classes, at different prices, means they cover their fixed costs. Having every customer on ClassPass may not work out for them.
Cash flow also comes into play. I’m not sure if ClassPass buys blocks of classes from the studio each month or only pay commission on successfully booked classes on a monthly basis. Studios with regular members usually get membership dues before they host the classes, easing forecasting and cash flow. ClassPass may pay later.
Join ClassPass, get $50 & support Defy Ventures
I’m excited to see where ClassPass goes next. They have great team they’re building in NYC and a huge network of studios they’re growing nationwide. I’m sure their revenue model will be evolving but I’ll be enjoying all of the benefits at the current price while I can.
If you’re interested in signing up, they are currently running an offer to give $50 to anyone who signs up, and give $50 to anyone who refers someone in.
Now here’s the deal, if you use the promotion link to sign up for ClassPass by Sunday 1/19 (promotion extended!), you will get $50 for yourself and the $50 that I receive I will donate to Defy Ventures, a fantastic non-profit organization that transforms the lives of people with criminal histories through entrepreneurship, employment and character training*. You get ClassPass, $50 and you get to support a great group.
Update 3/8: We raised $150 for Defy Ventures!
[*Full details: This offer is limited to the ClassPass promotion which ends 1/18/15, 11:59PM. ClassPass does not provide cash awards but giftcards. If you sign up it will be $99/month but you’ll get a $50 Visa Giftcard in the mail. I get one too. I will donate the cash equivalent of the $50 giftcards received. ClassPass may notify me if new members sign up through that link, I may not have access to your email address so please feel free to send me a note on twitter that you signed up so I can say thanks!]
You can learn the whole world through a cup of coffee.
Industrial integrity of a paper cup, the malleability of a plastic lid.
Polymers and isotopes mixed in.
Chemistry, boiling points, dissolving, and separating particles.
Dairy products, measurements, and agriculture.
Barter for beans, taxes on border crossings and global labor markets.
Dollars and cents of a hot beverage.
Consumers and nonsense.
Storage, scaled operations and resource management.
What fills your cup in the way you see the world? There is no problem too small to spark curiosity. The path may wind you into new worlds quickly.
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Today, computers can touch and sense like machines. Scientists have created artificial skin that senses, and stretches like the real thing.
On the flipside, in the transhumanism movement, humans have tried to add their number of senses through implants. I first found mention of it through msg’s reblog. You can read the full excerpt here:
“This is big in the Grinder [not Grindr] community. Most people start off by implanting magnets in their fingertips, which gives you the ability to feel magnetic fields. Your fingertips have lots of nerve endings jammed into one area and they are really sensitive to stimuli. Magnets twitch or move in the presence of magnetic fields, and when you implant one in your finger you can really start to feel different magnetic fields around you. So it is like a sixth sense. At first you will be waving your hand around appliances, probing fields like someone looking for a light switch in the dark. After a few days or weeks you will almost forget you have the implant because your brain has fully incorporated the sense into your normal world experience. When you sleep you will notice that even your dreams have changed to include the sense. You can now perceive an otherwise invisible world.
This makes many curious about all of the other things happening around them that they can’t see and they want more. So let’s expand on the magnet thing. We can buy all kinds of different sensors to detect heat, radiation, radio signals, wifi, whatever you want. If we wrap a wire around our implanted finger and attach that wire to our new sensor, we find that the wire creates a small magnetic field to the beat of the sensor. This of course makes our magnet twitch, and now we can feel heat from a distance, feel wifi, or whatever.
Why limit ourselves to feeling these sensations? We have other senses we can induce synesthesia in. I got some media attention in June of 2013 after I implanted headphones in my tragus to do just that. I had some practical reasons for doing this in addition to my thirst for exploration. A few years earlier I suddenly became legally blind in one eye. Lenses cannot correct it and my original eye doctor informed me that the other eye was likely to follow, at which point I would be legally blind, lose my job, etc. With this inevitability in mind I decided to be proactive. Ultrasonic rangefinders are devices used to determine how far away an object is. I knew that most blind people find acoustic variations help them identify the proximity of objects, so I figured I might be able to amplify this by converting rangefinder data into audio I could send wirelessly to my headphone implants. It turned out to be much more complicated than I thought, but that is a part of Grinding that I have come to appreciate. My setbacks lead me deeper into the rabbit hole of audiology where I discovered knowledge that has unlocked a thousand more possibilities.
I’d say that 25% of the people I talk to about sensory enhancement think it’s really cool and some go get implants themselves. The other 75% will nod their head and hope the conversation ends or they laugh and ask “why would anyone want to feel magnetic fields?” I get asked that question so much, and I still find it hard to articulate. They usually point out that “you don’t need it,” to which I counter “what if you lost the ability to taste? You don’t really need it to survive.” Ask anyone with an implant how they would feel if they lost the implant, and almost all of them will tell you they would miss it. A small bit of richness would be missing from their life experience.
Visible light is but a tiny portion of the greater magnetic spectrum that we cannot see. If we modeled the entire spectrum as a road stretching from LA to New York, the amount of visible light that humans can see would equal a few nanometers. Humans, from our allegorical caves, have nonetheless managed to form and test theories about things at the edges of perception but these discoveries took thousands of years. Where would humans be now technologically if we never developed sight? How long would it take us to theorize the existence of the aurora borealis or to hypothesize about the existence of stars? This reduction of input obviously cripples the rate of input.
So is the opposite true? Would expanding our senses accelerate our advancement? My answer is yes. Some Grinder friends of mine formed a team called Science for the Masses to discover if they could biologically push human perception of visible light into the near-infrared spectrum. This is a small increase, around 6% above our current abilities. The impact is dramatic. The new light allows you to see through fog and haze, tinted windows, and some clothing. Stars can be seen during day hours. Subtle changes in blood flow can be seen under the skin, allowing anyone to detect circulation problems and find clots. Seeing blood flow takes some of the guesswork out of determining what mood your date is in and lying becomes nearly impossible. Imagine how this awareness would have altered human history, politics, art, courtship, and relationships. Does human psychology benefit in a world where sincerity and emotional context can be seen with the naked eye rather than hypothesized or conjured? The new layers of info I’ve detailed above are actually just the tip of the iceberg. The real magic of sensory expansion comes from finding deviations and surprises that don’t fit within our scientific understanding because it makes us reconcile our mental models of the world with reality.”
Full article: Zoltan Istvan interviews Rich Lee, http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/istvan20140708 (via grinderbot)
The loss of senses is no longer a limit. The senses we’re born with aren’t either. Replicate humans with machines or replicate machines with humans. What side are you most excited about?
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Mobile is the future, or it was a few years ago. The future is something new, something we haven’t seen yet, the question is whether we ever will.
No, I don’t believe the next great innovation will never arrive, instead, I think the next technology for change is coming but won’t arrive in the form of a device. Instead, it’ll be powered by each of us, the last millimeter of the internet.
The Accessible Web
When discussing human interaction with the internet, the age of personal computers was built on top of the ‘last mile of the internet’. Getting internet connectivity to personal homes and office spaces. Talk of the 'last mile’ has rose again as we talk about net neutrality, and the need to protect an unbiased connection.
Mobile brought the 'last meter’ of the internet. It changed our interaction with the web. We weren’t constrained to using the web only in a fixed place. The access 'anywhere’ nature of mobile in combination with more sensors, app ecosystems and global adoption have created a wave of new innovations since their introduction.
Wearables have provided additional pieces of sensor data, but most are more an extension of the mobile device than revolutionary platforms for a new ecosystem. They are good, but I’m not sure if they’ve gone far enough.
The step after that, the last millimeter, is about bringing perception to our interactions with the web. It brings the ability to learn about us, the things we do, and the things we want to do. Now this is not just 'us’ as the masses, but a personalized reaction to what you, as an individual, do.
What would the last millimeter look like? Only time will tell, it will likely leverage mobile phones for their ability to reach the cloud, so the technology may not look different.
The biggest difference will be how it feels.
Near Future
Right now, I can geofence my Hue lightbulbs to turn on when I arrive near my apartment or am the last one to depart. It’s a sweet gesture but it’s not always accurate and it requires keeping a 'geo’ ping on all of the time.
Now, my human logic would want to include more complicated tasks and nuance. Don’t geo-ping if I’m at work. If it’s dark out, turn the lights on. If someone else is in the apartment, don’t turn off the lights until they leave too. Maybe on different holidays Hue could surprise me with a different color theme matching the date of celebration. There are many things that are possible, but will not happen. The expense of setting up rules or daisy-chaining IFFT commands together do not provide enough value.
Okay, Hue lights are geeky and none of those changes are actually going impact my day-to-day. So let’s take something a little more mainstream (for a smart-phone carrying urbanite). In the winter, I usually take the subway to work. I know that to be at my office on time, I have a certain number of minutes of commute time, just to be safe, to get there on time. I do this everyday so I don’t need advice on how to get to work.
However, occasionally the trains aren’t running, or they aren’t running on time. I don’t know this until I arrive on the platform. I don’t think to look for this information as I have no reason to suspect my train won’t arrive. I also have little incentive to setup a system to push myself that information when 95% of the time my system works.
The last millimeter apps think like me. Oh hey, you normally take the 6, and the 6 isn’t running this morning. I should plan an alternative route to get to work. If I have more than enough time, I could walk to the N. If it’s nice out I could see if there are Citibikes nearby. If I’m rushed for time I should hail a cab. This logic is occurring in my brain, but actually coordinating additional information to make those decisions is stuck in my phone. I just need those two pieces to work together a little bit closer, with the hope most of the processing will happen on the cloud side and not require me to push buttons, switch apps and anticipate the 'failure points of my commuting routine’.
The impact of these examples is trivial, but the power of what this level of connection could provide makes me wonder.
Could the elderly have better medical care if they didn’t have to setup the technology to enable reminders to take medicine or remember to check their pacemaker batteries?
Could we distribute excess food supplies in my location to a place in need nearby, because demand and supply are perceived at a larger scale?
Can we accelerate medical discoveries because learnings can be aggregated, with attribution, in real time? Not in the sense that the technology will be putting together the pieces, but it will enable those doing the work to realize what is going on in other places. No need to 'search’ for discoveries or setup notifications.
There are many great blogs, books, and films that explore the future and our relationship with technology. Of course, it’s surrounded with questions and concerns around privacy, legal responsibility, and societal changes. Those topics are part of the innovation we’ll need to see too.
The future is almost here, I’m curious to see the early bridges that lead us to the next great thing.
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Every technology companies’ hiring process has bugs. Not software glitches, but human error, flaw, failure, and fault that causes it to behave in unintended ways.
Hiring practices include only reviewing candidates that attended a small list of schools. An incredibly talented engineer is skipped because his school isn’t recognized by your hiring manager.
An interviewer couldn’t articulate it exactly, but felt the candidate wasn’t a fit for the company culture. The interviewee was a great match for the role, but the opposite personality type of the interviewer, someone from a different team.
A star candidate becomes less interested in working on your team when they realize they are the only person in the company who is not like everyone else. Your hiring manager assumes the candidate took another role (but doesn’t ask) for other reasons and moves on to their second choice.
Leadership insisted the ‘big job’ go to a candidate that came from a big company. The hire had only worked on large teams, experience that had little use within the small company where they were hired. High salary paid, recruiter compensated, and an employee who left after 12 months.
The hardest thing about bugs isn’t the error they throw, it’s finding them in the first place. Only companies who invest time in running QA on their hiring process will build the innovative teams they want. That of course requires knowing what you want in the first place.
Having a hiring process is important, almost as important as remembering that it’s all based on the bias of the people who built it.
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If you asked me a few years ago about my morning routine, I’d smirk. It was more like a morning scramble. Wake up with just enough time to hop in the shower, get ready, and get out the door.
As an entrepreneur, it seemed practical. Maximize time at the office and sleep for 6-7 hours to get back into the office early the next morning. Hustle they say! I made morning multitasking an art: testing tips like brushing my teeth in the shower and dictating my to-do list in audio notes while getting ready. I was incredibly efficient, or so I thought.
I wasn’t efficient, I was running fire drills. And it burned me out over time. Snoozing more often than I wanted. Distracted the first hour at work after a hectic schedule. I got the hint, I needed to rethink my mornings, but made only minor adjustments until I learned a new way from my fiancé Neal.
His routine was solid. He woke up at 6am, made a cup of coffee, and enjoyed it while listening to the news. At 7am he headed out for an hour workout. He then returned home to get ready and arrive at work by 9.
This was crazy when I first learned of this routine. He had 3 hours before he even got to work! What about the sleep? Aren’t you tired? It’s still dark at 6am!
Skeptical, I accepted the challenge to try it. After a few days of “I’ll just reset the alarm for 7am instead..” I got the hang of it. Let me tell you, it was really pleasant! Quiet time is so rare that it was like finding hidden treasure. Calm, quiet and no obligations, even email is pretty slow at that hour.
Now I’m hooked. The best part about it is that no matter how hectic the day gets, there is always time that belongs to us.
Neal and I now use 6am - 7am as time together, to chat, share, and listen to the news. Although meetings or workouts sometimes conflict with the set schedule, we stay pretty true to it.
It has other perks. It’s nice arriving at the office with a fresh mind. And after work, there is no pressure to squeeze in a workout at the end of the day.
I’m still working on time to write more, and I’ve heard from many people that the morning is the best time to do it. Maybe it’s time to start dictating blogs to my phone. I’ll save that for another day.
If you have something to share, drop a line in the comments or send me a line on Twitter.To subscribe to weekly email updates, sign up here.