I Actually Love Targeted Ads

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About ten to twelve years ago, I found some free Tower Defense game on the App Store. It was challenging enough to keep me interested, but not so difficult I’d bang my head against the wall, and it became my goto game when waiting in the airport or when I wanted some mindless downtime.

It was free, but supported by advertising. This was the heyday of games like FarmVille. Fun Fact: In 2011, the developer of FarmVille, Zynga, made up 19% of Facebook’s entire revenue! So ad supported games were not only common then, they were considered the best way for mobile games to monetize.

After every Tower Defense level I completed, an ad would show as the next level loaded. Except these weren’t your normal ads. They were awesome. They marketed stuff that I actually wanted to buy. With each ad displayed, I could mark it as relevant or not, and as I fed back to the ad network (whose name I can’t remember anymore), the ads became even more tailored. I ended up buying more stuff from that game than I’ve ever bought from any advertising medium, ever. All of the stuff I bought was relevant, high quality, and I was pleased with every purchase. And here’s the thing – I actually enjoyed seeing the ads! Kind of like how I enjoy the ads in hyper-targeted magazines I subscribe to like Model Railroader – they’re all super relevant and help build awareness about products I might like.

At some point, the ad network folded, and the developer of the game went bust, and while I’ve moved on to other tower defense games, I often think about that ad network. I was using an ad blocker on my web browser even back then, and today, the the only real exposure to web ads I get is via YouTube, Instagram, and a couple newspapers I subscribe to like the New York Times. Everything else is blocked.

I have two YouTube accounts, and two Instagram accounts, and both have very focused personas and interests, but the thing is – the ads I’m served there just completely suck. They’re not relevant (marking them as such does nothing to change this), and at least half of them are retargeting from websites I’ve already bought something from (the ad shows up AFTER I’ve converted, for the first time). Perhaps worst of all, they are shown at a frequency that is just insane – like back to back or multiple times in a 2-3 minute scrolling session.

1.5 Billion in market cap and 163,000 employees between them, and Google and Facebook can’t even get my profile right. Perhaps most bizarrely, they don’t even ask me what I’m interested in apart from maybe inferring my interests based on the accounts/topics I follow or the videos/posts I like..

Why?

This reminds me of the age-old comment proffered by Folks Who Don’t Like Ads on the Internet. Why can’t we just pay a fee to get rid of ads on Facebook or Instagram or <insert social network here>? I used to ask this question, and it’s a good one. The answer is that in 2015, a Facebook user was worth $3.73 per quarter (roughly $15 bucks a year). Well, I’d happily pay fifteen bucks a year to get rid of ads and disincentivize all of the rampant fake news and destructive political advertising that channels through social media! Except there’s a problem – by the end of 2017, the value was up to $6.18 per user per quarter, an increase of 165% in to years.

In 2021 a Facebook user is projected to be worth $56 per quarter ($226 per year) and an Instagram user is worth $31.5 ($126 per year).  Note the vaguely disappointed tone of that article when discussing the fact that Instagram just hasn’t managed to generate as much value per user as Facebook yet. Tsk tsk!

That’s a growth rate of 15x in four years, and oh by the way, has significantly outpaced my desire (or ability, and, I’m guessing, yours too) to pay to remove those ads. Paying to remove ads will actually lose Facebook money, because their overall audience would get smaller, and they’re forfeiting the future growth they could generate off your account. In other words, you are just one single customer representing one sale of your account, but they can almost-infinitely sell you to almost-infinite ad buyers out there, so your account’s value will, over time, asymptotically approach infinity. Or so the well-vetted financial model somewhere says. Not understanding this dynamic, by the way, is probably why my beloved (yet forgotten) ad network went bust.

Back to the original point – the reason none of the major ad networks allow us to actually feed in our preferences is driven by the same desire – if I told Facebook/Instagram that I only wanted to see ads about Lego or model trains, I would have removed myself from the pool of folks who might potentially be interested in jeans or a TV show or whatever. In other words, I limit down the potential buyers for myself, and that’s the last thing they ever want to happen.

What’s the point of all this? Well, I think this is an increasingly dangerous game to play – intentionally introducing a bit of old fashioned friction and obfuscation between users and advertisers, for the sole purpose of maximizing future revenue growth. Ad blockers are now more common and available on more platforms (including mobile) and the reason is that all the ads suck! Advertisers don’t push the envelope here and demand well qualified eyeballs because that would skew their metrics too, and the reality is that online advertising is about the only real solid metric most marketers have. It’s a combination of “it’s in budget” and “it’s better than the alternative” thinking.

As we head into the worst global recession since we, uh, understood that we lived on a globe, I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen when ad budgets get cut everywhere. Will some upstart come out of the woodwork that can actually show us some ads we want to watch, that take curation cues from us directly, and make everyone’s life on the internet better (except of course for Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the like)?

Probably not, but I wish they would. In the meantime, the great cat and mouse game continues between ad blockers and social media networks, and the internet just continues to get a little worse each day.

I guess in that way, it’s kind of like a game of Tower Defense.

Hello Turing Fest!

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I still remember the first time I went to a Turing Festival event – Steve Wozniak was speaking at the Edinburgh Playhouse Theater. What a treat! I paid for my ticket, walked the few minutes from my flat (we didn’t have an office at that time at Administrate), and spent the next hour hearing from one of the pioneers of computing.

Since that afternoon in 2012, the festival has been an annual highlight on my calendar. I’ve also been able to get involved as a host, moderator, interviewer, and speaker, and have even managed to suggest speakers to the curation team from time to time. I’m really proud that based on some of my recommendations Edinburgh was able to welcome Michael Pryor (Trello and Frog Creek Software), Fred Destin (Stride.vc) and Eric Yuan (Zoom). I’m still holding out hope for the Dalai Lama and Eddie Vedder too.

Over the years, the Turing Festival has evolved substantially. Originally founded by the Coleman brothers, (the same duo that founded the CodeBase, one of Europe’s largest tech incubators), the event rebooted in 2016 with a new CEO, and a slightly adjusted moniker – Turing Fest. Now benefitting from full time, dedicated attention year round, the event began to grow into what it is today. This evolution mirrors the advancement of Edinburgh as a tech ecosystem more broadly, and underscores just how important Turing Fest is to the community here. For tech, this event is where Edinburgh specifically, and Scotland more generally, meets the world.

As a part of our growing community, Administrate has consistently sponsored the event every year, which is something we feel is important in and of itself, but it also means we can send a good portion of our team to participate and learn. This kind of learning opportunity is rare enough, but even more-so for it to be on our doorstep. I’ve recommended Turing Fest to countless local startups and if you’re in Europe and in the tech industry, I consider it irresponsible not to attend.

I have a love-hate relationship with the stage of the Turing Fest. Mainly because that’s where I’ve debuted some of my most challenging talks, discussing topics such as mental health, and the often unspoken challenges required to build a tech company. During last year’s talk on mental health, one which I was apprehensive to give, I knew the CEO of Administrate’s at-the-time fiercest competitor would be in the audience, which didn’t help the jitters! Afterwards he emailed me a heartfelt and touching note of encouragement, something I won’t forget.

One of my favorite memories was moderating a panel that included Gareth Williams of Skyscanner, Ed Molyneux of FreeAgent, Damian Kimmelman of DueDil, and Or Offer of SimilarWeb – I asked the question of how many WFIO (We’re Fucked, It’s Over) moments each of them had experienced. All of them talked candidly and vulnerably about the their experiences with multiple WFIOs, and a couple mentioned they’d had one within the last couple of months! Those responses were important for the audience to hear, but they were also important for me to hear, and I’ve reminded myself many times that failure is a normal part of the journey for every startup.

The atmosphere around the Turing Fest also includes many fond memories. I remember escorting Morten Primdahl, the CTO and a cofounder of Zendesk, through the streets of Edinburgh heading towards the speaker’s dinner, pummeling him with questions about their tech stack, their growth, and whether he liked this new product from Amazon called “Aurora” (he did, we do too, and we still use it!). I’m sure he was relieved to finally arrive and be rid of me! The impromptu drinks, dinners, and amazing stories that have been shared around Turing Fest have been opportunities to meet new friends, deepen relationships, learn, reflect, challenge myself, and grow.

I mention these anecdotes because all of them draw on key threads that make Turing Fest both unique and meaningful. Access to inspiring people, opportunities to share and broaden one’s horizon, and the power of serendipity when you bring a diverse group of people together are core to what Turing Fest is about. All of this set against the stunning backdrop of the city of Edinburgh is something that cannot be rivaled by any other event.

I was therefore thrilled when my good friend Brian Corcoran asked me to join the board of Turing Fest. We’ve already shared hundreds of hours of discussion about the event, and in some ways this seems like the formalisation of something that’s been happening for years. Brian has built an incredible team and a truly outstanding event, and I’m excited to help as we continue to build for the future. As usual, I’ve included my annual resign-every-year demand.

We’re on the eve of TuringFest 2019, and I can’t wait for another year of learning, connecting, and growing. I hope to see you there!

Moving On

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Over three years ago, a good friend of mine asked if I’d consider joining the board of a local startup. They were very early stage, in the healthcare space, they’d raised a bit of funding, and were looking to grow.

Great. I meet with a lot of startups, mainly trying to help and provide a sounding board. Many of the founders are inspiring, many have reasonable ideas, some of them will go on to be successful, but it’s really rare that I personally get excited about any particular company. Certainly not enough to join and invest time, money, and energy!

But I owed my buddy a favour, so we met at the closest pub to my flat, and I prepared my gracious-decline speech. Except something strange happened. As Chris talked about what they were building, I became increasingly interested.

Current Health (at the time named Snap40) had designed a clinical grade (requiring FDA approval) wearable intending to replace most of the normal monitoring equipment found within a hospital ICU. This device could then be linked to a phone or tablet, and could help identify patient deterioration, perhaps even before a human would notice. There were other applications too – for example, my mid-sixties father crashed his bike recently, blacked out, went to the hospital and got an MRI, then was held for a further 24 hours for “observation.” In this scenario, perhaps he could have been sent home earlier as long as he was monitored for deterioration. Plenty of conditions could benefit from proactive monitoring at the home linked to a healthcare provider, and even more mundane challenges like medication monitoring (ie, did they take their blood pressure medication? Lets see!) could be significantly improved.

A major challenge for sales within the healthcare industry is dealing with a sophisticated and opinionated Decision Making Unit. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, administrators, and technical people all factor in, and in a new category educating this market can be really time consuming and expensive. Would healthcare professionals get this? I called a few physicians I knew and asked. They immediately got it, several of them referenced having this idea themselves, and one of them spent more than an hour telling me all the different ways it would save their hospital and health network money. So that seemed promising.

One of the key things that attracted me to this implementation is the wearable is a “dumb” device. Raw signal is sent to the cloud where it’s analysed and processed using a combination of machine learning (yes really) and other algorithms. This means a couple of things – the algorithms can be tuned using all data ever collected from every device out there, and new algorithms can be shipped without replacing the devices. In other words, the more data collected, the higher the accuracy.

This is a crucial distinction: Current Health isn’t a medical device company, it’s not a software company, it’s a platform company.

I joined the board in March of 2016, with one condition – I would resign every year in March. Chris could accept or reject my resignation. While I’ve been a member of the board at Administrate since I joined in 2011, I’d never held a board position on another company before. Maybe I’d suck at it. Maybe the company would outgrow my expertise. In any event, they wouldn’t have to wait too long to get rid of me if that became necessary.

“Is it going to work?”

For the first two years, this was the major question. Pilots at local hospitals were really promising, and we obtained a European CE mark which meant we could sell it within Europe, but we needed to get certified by the FDA to tackle the USA. This was tricky, because the FDA had never certified a hybrid device like this before.

The next three years (and three resignations) passed quickly, and I’m super proud of what we achieved. A CE mark, multiple pilots, FDA certification for use in both the hospital and home environments, recruitment of a fantastic team, an office move, a rebrand, and multiple funding rounds, including one of the largest seed rounds ever raised in Scotland.

But perhaps the achievement I’m most proud of happened recently during an extended pilot project in the United States – we identified a patient’s vitals slipping, and alerted staff to the issue. The traditional monitoring machines didn’t notice, and we saved a life. The first of many I’m sure.

The traditional monitoring machines didn’t notice, and we saved a life. The first of many I’m sure.

Current Health is going to fundamentally transform how we receive and provide healthcare. I’m super excited for the future, but I also realise that the time has come to step down from the board and make way for the next stage of growth. To the disappointment of most, there’s no drama here, it’s simply time to move on.

I remain deeply thankful to Chris (and my pal who introduced us!) and the team at Current Health for giving me this opportunity. I learned a ton, got to work alongside some incredible people, and I believe this experience made me a better CEO – sitting on the other side of the table can be really enlightening! I am extremely excited to watch how Current Health will grow and I couldn’t be more optimistic about their future.

The Magic of Vinyl

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About a year ago, I put a Sonos sound system in my flat.  It had been more than 15 years since I’d had a stereo of any kind, and while I’d enjoyed being able to carry around my music collection on my phone for years, I never really listened to music at home, unless I was in front of a computer.  While it sounds incredibly cheesy, it really did help me fall in love with music again – I could listen while walking around the flat, working on something not in front of a computer, cooking, etc.

One of my favourite features of Apple Music (yes, lets not get into the Spotify vs. Apple debate) are the variety of radio stations and the playlist discovery, but I realised (after a year of listening to way more music than I’d ever managed before) that I’d gravitated to this almost anonymous way of interacting with artists, albums, and music.  One of my personal policies with the iTunes Store over the years was I would always buy the entire album of an artist.  I felt like an album was a sacred thing.  But here I was guilty of not having listened to a complete album in over a year.

I had lost something.  I had lost the ceremony of music.  I missed the experience of looking at the album artwork and liner notes (remember that?) and focusing on music the way the artist intended.    What to do?

I decided to get a record player.  Nothing fancy, and I’ve committed the sacrilege of hooking it up to my Sonos system which would horrify any analog purist, but I don’t care.  I also don’t care about audio quality that much either, and I’m not going to pretend that records sound better or that they’re warmer or any of the other stuff Vinyl Geeks will obsess over – that’s not the point.

The point is, the last couple of weeks I’ve sat down, dimmed the lights in the living room, put on a record, and experienced the album and artist in a way I haven’t since I was in high school.  Back then I would spend hours listening to music and intently study every piece of art and lyric that came with a new CD.

I still listen to playlists and radio stations my massive digital music collection while I’m walking, working, and running around the house.  But I now have a new avenue for music, and it was something that’s been missing.

I know I’m late to the party, but I’m glad I finally made it!

P.S. Sonos is my nominee for “company most likely to become like TiVo and squander a massive opportunity”.  Their hardware is great, their idea was revolutionary and visionary when they launched, but they’ve spent years coasting and delivering crummy software.  I don’t see them pulling out their tailspin anytime soon and Google, Apple, and a bunch of other companies will be eating their lunch over the next 2-3 years. Just like what happened to TiVo. It’s sad, really, but when your latest big feature (Alexa integration) takes you more than a year to ship AND it’s completely terrible, you kind of deserve it.

How to Solve Sonos Playbar Speech Issues with the Apple TV

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A couple months ago, I purchased a Sonos Playbar to replace a Bluetooth Samsung Soundbar I had, as I wanted to integrate the living room audio setup with the rest of my house, which is all Sonos.

Probably due to over-exposure to loud music from playing in rock bands through highschool and college, I really struggle to hear conversation in noisy environments like pubs, and this issue extends to hearing speech in movies unless I’ve got a dedicated speech channel. My hearing seems fine overall (famous last words I guess), just differentiating speech within noisy backdrops is annoying.  Modern flat screen TVs really exacerbate this issue as their speakers aren’t great anyway, let alone for pushing out a nice clean speech channel.

The sound you get from the Playbar (and two Play 1s for surround sound) is great for music, but the results I’ve had regarding speech during movies have absolutely sucked.  It’s kind of surprising when you start seeing threads like this one where there’s dozens of people complaining for years, with no real response / solution.

Here’s how to solve this situation:

You need to bypass any potential pre-processing that might happen to the audio signal.

If you have a receiver it’s probably a safe bet your signal is clean, but like most people, I just have a TV and a bunch of HDMI inputs.  I had them plugged into my Samsung 4k Smart TV and I had the optical audio connected from the TV to the Sonos Playbar.  I had the TV correctly configured to bypass any audio processing and it was only shunting the audio out to the optical port.  Except it wasn’t.

To inexpensively solve this issue:

  1. Buy an HDMI splitter with an audio optical out, like this one.
  2. Hook your AppleTV (which doesn’t have an optical out) and any other devices (BluRay, etc.) into the splitter.  Hook the optical from the splitter into the Playbar.
  3. Turn on the Speech Enhancement on the Sonos App and Night Mode.
  4. You’re done! You now have clean audio and a functioning Dolby 5.1 signal that has clear dialog.

I’d like to point out here that the true villain of this story is Samsung for essentially lying about the pass-through capability of the TV.  Sonos should bear some blame here too – it could easily better educate customers and include some common troubleshooting advice either online or in the documentation.

Hope this helps!

Resignation

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A few weeks ago I resigned. I drafted the email, proofread it, and sent it in. It was pretty standard – I thanked the company for the opportunity, mentioned I was proud of what we’d achieved together, and wished them well.

No, I didn’t resign from Administrate – I resigned from my post as a Non-Executive Director (sometimes abbreviated NED, sometimes NXD) on the board of Snap40, one of Scotland’s most promising startups.

I love helping out startups, mainly because I’ve received so much help myself over the years from others. I know first hand how hard it is growing a company, and some of the advice, time, and mentorship I’ve received has come at critical points along the journey.

Just over a year ago I was asked to join the board at Snap40, and while initially surprised that I was asked and skeptical of the company, I was ultimately impressed with the market, product, vision, and team. I thought I could learn a lot as well! But before I agreed to join, I made it clear that I would resign every year, and the company could either accept or reject my resignation.

Why?

In a fast growing startup, particularly when things are at an early stage, the type of advice and support a company and CEO requires changes quickly, just like everything else. I’ve seen other founders struggle with the awkwardness of how to ask board members and advisors to step aside when they no longer had anything to add, and it was important to me to demonstrate that I viewed my appointment to the board as a fixed term, renewable every year. If the resignation is accepted, no problem! If not, I’m here for at least another year (unless I need to be replaced before then).

I’d encourage other startup CEOs and board members to consider this model for board and advisor appointments. In my view, it’s important that the board members resign proactively as it demonstrates a willingness to step back and acknowledge that their time has potentially come to an end. Nobody likes to think that they’ve been outgrown, but it’s a fact of life, so lets not ignore it.

As for me? My resignation from Snap40 this year was rejected. I’m really excited about the company, the team, and the progress we’re making. I’ve learned a lot already and can’t wait to see what this coming year holds.

Now it’s back to work!

How to Ask for Advice / Feedback About Your Startup

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One of the things I’m passionate about is helping other startups and the community of entrepreneurs we have here in Edinburgh (and in Scotland).  Since becoming more intentional about “taking the pledge“, I’ve been meeting with lots of folks locally, and been surprised by the amount of requests!

So much so that other team members here at Administrate are helping me shoulder the load, according to areas of expertise (thanks Mike and Patrick!) and time constraints, and I know of many others in the community who are donating their time and expertise.  Helpfulness and support has always been a hallmark of the Scottish startup scene, so this isn’t anything new, but there’s so much more activity now, so many more companies, and so many more entrepreneurs now!  It’s great to see!

I’ve found that sometimes people don’t know what to expect, so I thought I’d lay out a brief framework to help everyone get the most out of the time.

  1. Remember that most advice is delivered within a context vacuum.  Don’t take my advice (or anyone else’s) without fully thinking things through and satisfying yourself.  Bad advice can come from really great people.
  2. In order to be at all helpful, I need context.  Things I usually ask about are: the problem you’re trying to solve (as a company), your business model (SaaS, etc), your market, some metrics around revenue, customers (people paying you money), team size, how long you’ve been going, growth, and churn.  It’s ok if you don’t have all of this information, but the quicker we can rattle through these items, the faster we can get up to speed.
  3. It’s totally cool if you just want to chat, but I’ll usually ask you what you’re biggest challenges are – we have these at Administrate and sometimes they feel cyclical (first we’re worried about sales, then tech, then support, then sales again, etc.).  Even if everything is going well, the question will often be “ok, how do we double down and make it even better?”
  4. I probably can’t help you too much with hiring (particularly “line” staff) – my network is mainly in the USA (so not local), and we’re in high growth mode here at Administrate, so if I know of any devs or whatever we’re probably going to hire them!
  5. Expect me to be very, very blunt.  If you’re British it may come across as almost hostile sometimes.  Sorry.  When I get into problem solving mode or analysis mode, I tend to interrupt, ask lots of questions, and don’t filter much.
  6. Expect me to play devil’s advocate.  Expect me to really push you on a few things.  Expect to be challenged.  The best advice I’ve ever received was from someone telling me they thought I could be a lot more ambitious, which annoyed me at the time, but really made a difference.
  7. One thing you won’t get from me is griping about raising money in the UK, finding a team, or complaining about Scottish Enterprise or Scottish Development International.  If you’re annoyed about these things, fine, but expect an argument from me!
  8. I’m not going to be very helpful to you with introductions to angels, VCs or syndicates.  These people all make their own decisions and won’t look at you in any different light if I make an intro for you.
  9. I won’t share anything about our conversation unless you specifically tell me you don’t mind.  I also expect the same in return.  This means I don’t mind if you want to ask me about challenges I’m facing now, etc.  We like to be transparent, and often it can be comforting to hear that someone else is going through something you’re struggling with.
  10. The majority of my experience and expertise is in high growth Business-to-Business Software-as-a-Service.  So be aware I’ll bias towards that style of company.  I don’t like most B2C ideas because they are riskier, require more funding earlier, require a lot of traction to be successful and are often harder to build and/or monetise.
  11. A couple of times things have gotten emotional (really!).  That’s OK! Building a business can be really hard.  Relationships are involved. It can feel overwhelming.  That’s normal.  Don’t be embarrassed.  It’s not the first time.
  12. Unfortunately, you may have your appointment changed around a few times.  Sorry, but Administrate comes first!  Also, it may be awhile before we can meet, and depending on what you’re looking to talk about, we may provide someone else from our team to give you a better perspective.

Hopefully that helps you get an idea of what to expect and makes everything run just a bit smoother!  I’ve enjoyed all of the conversations I’ve had and am always encouraged by the amazing people we have in Edinburgh working away on building things and solving problems.

Startups, Take the Pledge for Your Community

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We’re about to kick off another year, resolutions have been made, lots of parties have been attended, a bunch of milestones have been reached, and it hopefully feels good to get some closure on a year and plan for another.

I’d like to challenge you to add one more resolution to the list, and instead of thinking of it as a resolution, treat it as a habit, a lifestyle, a core part of your duty as being a member of your startup community.

As a bit of background, my startup Administrate is founded in Scotland, backed by Scottish investors, and a member of the fledgling Edinburgh startup community.  Using the term fledgling to describe a group of companies that has produced two unicorns (Scotland has the highest rate of unicorn production per capita in the world) seems a bit weird, but it’s true.  Like most non-Silicon Valley, non-Boston, (dare I say non-American?) locations, the community here is fairly young.  Most of the founders and senior management teams are first timers here.  All of us are trying to tackle the inherent challenges of building a sustainable business while learning as fast as we can, hoping to not commit that fatal mistake (last piece of learning?) along the way.

It Doesn’t Get Easier, You Just Go Faster

In cycling they say that it never gets easier, you just go faster, and I really believe the same is true with startups.  This stuff is really hard.  Even when things are really rewarding, you know you’re on the cusp of making it, you’re getting that positive press coverage, you’ve just raised money, you just signed that huge deal, whatever the milestone is, it’s still really, really hard.

And here’s the thing – if you’re a senior team leader or founder, there’s not many options for support.  Your spouse won’t fully understand what you’re going through.  Your board isn’t the right venue for a freakout.  Your direct reports have problems of their own that they need support to help address.

Feeling alone is one of the worst feelings, but it’s also one of the most common in a startup.

A Solution?

I’ve found that the single best avenue for support as a founder, CEO, or senior team member is to talk with a peer, usually someone who is ahead of you on the journey.  I don’t even mean support as in therapy, I mean support as in “I’m having this problem, how did you solve it?”, roll-up-the-sleeves style problem solving.

In the last 2 years, there’s been several key moments where I’ve received advice/suggestions/thoughts from members of our community that have caused me to rethink, come up with a plan, and have ultimately seriously transformed our company and helped make it one of the fastest growing tech startups in Scotland.  Things would have been very different if I hadn’t had that time from others who were ahead of me on the journey.

Take the Pledge

Spend 30 minutes every week helping other startups within your community.

You can spend an hour every other week, two hours with one person, etc., I’m not bothered about the mechanics, but just make sure you’re investing.  You can still run a highly structured calendar, you can ask people to come with a specific question or problem, you can implement this however you want, but the key is to be available, be supportive, and spread as much knowledge as possible.  Even if you don’t know how to help your fellow startup, refer them to someone who might, or tell them to read a book or go to a conference.

The funny thing about this is that the people that helped transform Administrate by spending time with me usually didn’t remember the conversation when I went back and thanked them.  I’ve had several instances of the same thing happening to me when someone mentions what a great help I was and it turns out it was a 10 minute conversation at a party.  These things add up, but they can only do that with consistent attention, over time.

The other interesting thing about this is that it’ll help you run a better business too! Taking your head out of your problems to focus on something else can provide clarity, and I’ve never found a situation where I couldn’t learn something from another company.

Lets Talk

If you think I could be of help, let me know! Hit me up on Twitter, email (if you don’t have my direct email, send it through the main Administrate email), phone, etc.  Sometimes it’ll take a week or two to get something arranged, sometimes it’ll be via the phone, but hopefully it’ll be helpful.

Go Watch Pixar’s “Inside Out”

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I’ve always loved Pixar’s movies.  The only times they’ve ever failed me were with Cars 2 and Brave, and they’re one of the most successful studios of all time.

pixar inside out

The just released Inside Out is easily one of their best films ever though. Directed by Pete Docter, who was behind most of my favourite Pixar movies (Monsters, Inc., Up, Toy Story, and Wall-E) this film is a masterpiece that explores emotions, growing up, and the very fundamentals of how our brains work. It was an incredibly moving film that deftly moved me from grief to laughter many times, and like most Pixar films, doesn’t even seem like it was made for kids.

So many of the plot points hit home for me: moving to a new city, anxiety over meeting new friends, feeling like something was wrong if I wasn’t happy, and not understanding the hows or whys of the emotions I was experiencing when growing up. There was even the pressure and fear of the father trying to put together an investment round for his startup!

The movie even spent quite a bit of time talking about how our brains work, using real science, and had a wonderful visualization of how depression can set in when the islands of your personality become disconnected.

This was such a thoughtful, emotional, beautiful film.  Go see it! You won’t regret it.

Visiting the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT

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Last night I experienced the privilege of visiting the Tech Model Railroad Club on MIT’s campus.  As an avid model railroader, computer science major, and great admirer of books like Hackers and Accidental Empires, I’ve heard of the TMRC for most of my life.  As a kid, my parents bought the 1986 edition of World Book, which underneath the entry “Model Railroads” included a picture of the TMRC layout, something I’ve never forgotten.

tmrc station

The first chapter of the book Hackers tells how some of the earliest computer science pioneers were involved in the TMRC .  A few of the notable members were Alan Kotok from DEC, Richard Greenblatt the coinventor of the MIT LISP machine (which is housed next door in the MIT Museum), John McCarthy who coined the term Artificial Intelligence and helped developed the LISP language, and Jack Dennis who was one of the founders of the Multics Project (the precursor to Unix).  These members along with others helped coin the term “Hacker”, and inscribed within the “Dictionary of the TMRC language” was the (now immortal to all computer scientists) phrase “Information wants to be free.”  These guys were budding computer scientists, brilliant minds, mischievous hackers, and they were serious about controlling model railroads.

The first chapter of Hackers describes the interplay between trains, their control, and what the TMRC meant to different students:

tmrc-overpass

“There were two factions of TMRC. Some members loved the idea of spending their time building and painting replicas of certain trains with historical and emotional value, or creating realistic scenery for the layout. This was the knife-and-paintbrush contingent, and it subscribed to railroad magazines and booked the club for trips on aging train lines. The other faction centered on the Signals and Power Subcommittee of the club, and it cared far more about what went on under the layout. This was The System, which worked something like a collaboration between Rube Goldberg and Wernher von Braun, and it was constantly being improved, revamped, perfected, and sometimes “gronked”—in club jargon, screwed up. S&P people were obsessed with the way The System worked, its increasing complexities, how any change you made would affect other parts, and how you could put those relationships between the parts to optimal use.”

tram system

For model railroaders, the TMRC is probably in the top 10 most famous layouts in the world along with names like John Allen’s Gorre & Daphetid, George Sellios’ Franklin & South Manchester, and famous club layouts like the San Diego Model Railroad Museum.  For techies, there is no other layout in the world of interest that’s anywhere in the TMRC’s league.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that model railroading and computers have always been bedfellows – even today model railroading has led the way in developing standards around Digital Command Control, interfacing locomotives, signalling, and other controls to a computer, and the Java Model Railroad Interface has provided us the world’s first successful test case of the Gnu Public License (the GPL), the open source software license that Linux and much of open source code relies on!

card operating schemeWith all of this background, I probably undersold the importance of the whole thing to my college roommate and his wife who live in Boston.   When they asked me what I wanted to do during our afternoon together it struck them as a bit odd that I’d already emailed the club from Scotland, had the phone number, and was anxious to make sure we didn’t miss the window.

Walking into the layout room we were met by the wonderful MIT alumnus and club member John Purbrick. He proceeded to give us an hour long tour showing us the various control systems, buildings, car card operating scheme, points of interest on the layout, and description of future plans.

custom built throttleTMRC uses a home grown software system (written in Java with the fronted in Python, all running on Linux) to run the trains.  The layout is still using DC block control, and trains can be run via the main computer system, or engines can be assigned to one of the many hand-built walk around throttles.  All turnouts are computer controlled and electronically operated, none are hand thrown.  For each yard or town area, there’s a diagram of the track layout with numbers on the left and right hand sides.  By keying in the number 0 on the left, and the number 5 on the right for example, the turnouts are all automatically thrown to present a route between the two points.  It’s simple, elegant, and impressive for a home built system.  As Mr. Purbrick put it, “We use a home built system on this layout because here at MIT, we have some experience with software.” Trains are detected by the software using electrical resistance, so operators can see from the software whether a train is on a siding, train with engine, or no train at all.

The main level of the layout is mostly complete, but there are plans for additional levels, and the layout features several huge helixes.  All visible mainline track is Code 83, sidings are Code 70, and there is some Code 55, and all visible turnouts are hand built.  There’s also a tram system that runs on one part of the layout.  Rolling stock varies but includes locomotives from Atlas, Athearn, and Kato. The president of Kato has visited from Japan and brought with him a gift of a few locomotives and some passenger cars.

soda machine

The TMRC receives no financial support from MIT other than free use of the space.  Just like in the late 50s (and covered in the book Hackers), the TMRC is supported from the proceeds that are made by selling soda from a machine in the hallway, and they turn a tidy profit according to Purbrick. A hand scrawled note affixed to the machine explains where the profits go and encourages patrons to email soda suggestions to the club for inclusion on the menu.

These days there aren’t many members left, apparently.  Maybe a dozen or so, although anyone can join. There was only one other member there while we visited, and the club struggles to get enough people together for operating sessions. Apparently there are several other thriving clubs in the area, but I wondered if there wouldn’t be a population of students out there who might not know of the TMRC’s heritage, it’s incredibly complex computer control system, and its delightful layout?

playing tetris on a buildingAs we made our way out at the end of the tour, Mr. Purbrick told us that we couldn’t leave without seeing the Tetris building.  From the hallway looking through the windows onto the layout, there is a control box.  When activated, the iconic tetris music begins to play, and the windows of the skyscraper light up to represent tetris blocks, which descend.  You can play a game of tetris represented on the windows of a building modelled by the TMRC, all powered by custom software and hardware components.  The creator of Tetris himself has been by to see this particular implementation, and while it wasn’t quite finished, he is said to have given it his approval.

“It’s one of our better hacks,” said John Purbrick, and I couldn’t agree more.