BrainCrack

where's the money in social?

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:19:00 +0400

It’s nowhere to be found…

Photo by 401k.

Brands spend and spend to grow their fans, get more followers and have more impressions but what’s beyond that?

Are those numbers resulting in more sales, actual customers, more retail footfall, etc.?

I bet not. Or at least nowhere near the amounts of money being spent.

Here’s a quote from a recent piece on Facebook and why they might not be able to keep growing their Ad sales:

They all told me the same thing—they don’t have the tools to measure whether social ads are driving sales, and they don’t care, because these ads currently constitute a miniscule portion of their advertising budgets. To continue its rapid growth, though, Facebook is going to have to convince such firms to devote more of their money to social ads.

One day someone will wake up and ask “where’s the money?” and there will be silence in the room…

Zuckerberg's "The Hacker Way"

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:42:18 +0400

Buried within Facebook’s SEC filing is one of the most profound pieces ever written about Facebook.

It briefly describes the DNA of Facebook, that is responsible for making it the way it is now.

If you’re looking for the secret sauce to build a great company for the future, the below should be your bible:

I’ve bolded some key parts that you shouldn’t miss.

The Hacker Way

As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.

The word “hacker” has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.

Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.

Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.”

Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.

To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have. At the end, the whole team gets together and looks at everything that has been built. Many of our most successful products came out of hackathons, including Timeline, chat, video, our mobile development framework and some of our most important infrastructure like the HipHop compiler.

To make sure all our engineers share this approach, we require all new engineers — even managers whose primary job will not be to write code — to go through a program called Bootcamp where they learn our codebase, our tools and our approach. There are a lot of folks in the industry who manage engineers and don’t want to code themselves, but the type of hands-on people we’re looking for are willing and able to go through Bootcamp.

what they don't tell you about entrepreneurship

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:38:00 +0400

It’s fucking hard!

Harder than anything you’ve done before.

Not only it will test you physically, mentally and emotionally every day, it will push you to your extreme limits, beyond what normal people go through in their worst days… and then some more.

You give it everything you have and yet you have higher chances of failing than making it, statistically speaking of course. But I know what you tell yourself: you’re better than others.

Just stop for a moment and realize that everyone thinks that (they really do), which means there are no others.

So before you start dreaming about all the money, fame and women, ask yourself this: are you ready to pay the price? and the price is a lot more than you expect.

I’ll be honest here; If I knew all of that before starting my own business, I wouldn’t have done it.

Maybe I’m a pussy. You’re surely not.

why I'm being a jerk to local startups

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 23:05:00 +0400

In his Wamda piece about Cairo StartupWeekend, Omar has referred to me as “notoriously hard to please”, so it got me thinking about this reputation of mine and how it came to be in the first place.

So, why am I such an asshole to local startups?

Because I refuse to treat them like children.

Everyone claps and cheers for stupid ideas and embarrassing products, because they want to encourage what they see as vain attempts, in the hope that someday those young founders can grow up to create actually decent stuff.

How do I know that? It’s because this is what they tell me, in confidence of course.

Those industry leaders, investors, CEOs, StartupWeekend judges and mentors secretly think this about you and your work, but end up saying ego-soothing comments and words of support.

I dunno about you, but this sounds insulting to me! I surely don’t want to be treated as such, and I believe that we need to be held up to the highest standards, that startups in places like Silicon Valley are held up to.

How can we ever learn to create great products if we’re constantly told that our shitty pathetic creations are good enough?

The teams behind world-leading products like Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare and Path are certainly no better than anyone of us here in the region, only difference is they have very high standards which the industry expects of them, and they work their ass off to meet that.

In closing, I ask you again: do you still want to be treated like children?

what entrepreneurship is really about

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:07:28 +0400

3 things:

1- making a shitload of money

2- saying fuck you to your boss, and never working for someone else again

3- having the freedom to do whatever the hell you want to

Everyone is going around trying to glorify it by saying things like: entrepreneurship is about solving “real” problems, changing the world or building great products, and so and so… you know, the usual bullshit…

Truth is, you can do all of these things if you work for others, and sometimes more effectively! You can’t argue that the average employee inside Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are changing the world, building great products and solving problems more than 80% of the entrepreneurs out there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for people starting their own business, just don’t go around and over-glorifying what you do and make a prophet out of yourself… let’s be real.

no one gives a fuck about your Klout score!

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:03:10 +0400

Seriously… do you think people check out your Klout score before they talk to you or reply to your tweets? get a life…

Try to realize how ridiculous it is that your social self-worth is being tied to some guys writing stupid algorithms and playing with them like kids!

You’re better off seeking some Penis enlargement treatments… at least someone will really care about the difference!

Having fun with Siri

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:21:00 +0400

Having fun with Siri

iPhone 4S

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:20:08 +0400

If you’re considering an iPhone 4S, you only need to read those reviews:

David Pogue / New York Times

Joshua Topolsky / This is my next

Walter S. Mossberg / AllThingsD

John Gruber / Daring Fireball

MG Siegler / TechCrunch

I read all of the above and many more so you don’t have to… here’s the final verdict in short:

If you own any phone other than iPhone 4 (especially Android), then go get this one!
If you already have an iPhone 4, then only get the 4S if you rely heavily on its Camera or could really need the extra speed.
Siri is fucking awesome! and if the idea of a smart voice-activated personal assistant tickles you, then you won’t be disappointed!

Me personally? I’m getting one!

why I'm not going to GITEX this year

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:13:05 +0400

because it’s fucking boring

"Every significant invention must be startling, unexpected, and must come into a world that is not..."

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 16:01:59 +0400

“Every significant invention must be startling, unexpected, and must come into a world that is not prepared for it. If the world were prepared for it, it would not be much of an invention.”

- Edwin H. Land - The Man Who Inspired Jobs

why I'm boycotting TEDxDubai

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:50:14 +0400

because the organizers are a bunch of dicks!

"nominative determinism: the tendency for our names to influence our life decisions as we..."

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:48:08 +0400

“nominative determinism: the tendency for our names to influence our life decisions as we subconsciously gravitate towards choices that remind us of ourselves.”

- Wired UK Magazine

#SWAlex Startups

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:16:00 +0400

After I published my own list of #SWAlex winners, many of you has asked for descriptions of all the startups that I mentioned, so I went back to my tweets (so many of them!) and compiled the below.

Here’s the startups descriptions (in the order they were presented in):

StoreMate: web-based POS system that saves small businesses the cost of buying POS systems and instead they can use the PCs they have. StoreMate can work offline when there’s no connection and then syncs with the server later on to push updates.
Real-Life Like: allow brands and business to incoporate Facebook’s Like button for real-life objects, it uses a hardware platform and RFID cards carried by users and connected to their accounts.
7ad Nazel Min Barra: enables users to request products from each other when they’re coming from other countries: US, Europe, etc. The udea answers a big need for people in Egypt and the region to get access to new products quickly and not wait for local releases.
1001inventions: 3D educational game that aims to educate users about historical inventions through an engaging gameplay, with characters, dialogue and action.
bYae3 b El3arabya: a Startup that aims to reduce reckless driving, by installing a device in the car that sends alerts whenever the observed G-force exceeds certain limits, which happens in cases of careless driving. Could be used by parents or car rental companies.
Korashrab: a game that builds on the popular street game in Egypt with the same name, the game is basically an Arabic fantasy football done the Egyptian way.
Farafeero.com: a daily deals aggregator.
QRasher: a QR code generation and tracking service, as part of their services they’re releasing a “QR Magazine” that brands and retailers can buy space in, and they will have QR t-shirts as well.
Khasesny: a community with a local twist to help people lose weight by tracking and sharing their progress with friends.
astweeted: aims to help you save all tweets under a certain hashtag, since twitter doesn’t show data more than 3 days old, and the site offers include graphs and reports.
Wall Market: a QR code based ordering menu and iPhone app, where buyers can scan items printed on a poster to place their order and get them delivered.
Q-hat: a Android-based loyalty program, that doesn’t require businesses and retailers to install any software or hardware.
Faselty: a place to connect people that need blood donations with willing blood donors.
Carpool: an iPhone app to help people offer and find car rides quickly and easily.
SLOW “social layer over the world”: mobile app that enables mobile tagging of real-world objects and uses Augmented reality to show those information.
Baddel.net: a bartering site for Egyptian users.
Ma7fazty: (wallet in Arabic) a mobile app to record and track personal expenses, enables users to have different users feed into one record, to keep track of families expenses.
Easy Charge: a mobile app to quickly and easily recharge the balance of your lines by taking photos of the recharge cards, capturing the number and processing it with the telcos.
Sweet Heaven: a site for parents and kids, where parents can grant points to their kids, which can be redeemed in gifts that kids can choose. Aims to incentivize kids to listen to parents by connecting achievements with gifts in ways they can understand.
Welad El Balad: aims to help tourists in Egypt by connecting them with the locals to ask them for help about anything, using their deep local knowledge and expertise.
OTM: an iPhone app to help you locate the nearest ATM to you, allows to filter ATMs by card types and banks.
Club7: a community to connect people that wake up at 7AM, to support and encourage each other and plan activities together.
You-Pik: a mobile/web service for photo-sharing, customization, printing, framing and gifting. It aims to be the place for photographers so sell their work, and for enthusiasts to buy great and cheap photos, printed and framed! They built a prototype iPad app that uses AR to help you try photographs that you like on the walls of your home, and change the framing and size before you can order.

my #SWAlex winners list!

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 16:22:00 +0400

There’s no denying that I was the official asshole of StartupWeekend Alexandria, and went around criticizing and passing judgement on participants left and right. I was just being honest and trying to hold the startups to the high standards that I think our work in the region should strive to match.

I have nothing against any single one of you, it’s admirable enough that you made it to the event and worked very hard on your idea, so I hope you take my feedback in good sport.

Without further ado, here’s my winners list across different categories:

Update: You can go here to read a brief description of each of the startups below.

Best overall startup: You-Pick

Runners-up: astweeted, Welad El Balad, Baddel.net

Most useful startup: OTM

Runners-up: astweeted, Welad El Balad, Carpool

Most original startup: Welad El Balad

Runners-up: 1001inventions, Real-life Like, Wall Market

Best startup for local needs: 7ad Nazel Min Barra

Runners-up: Faselty, Carpool, Khasesny

Best mobile app: You-Pick

Runners-up: OTM, Q-hat, ma7fazty

Best demo presentation: 1001inventions

Runners-up: Sweet Heaven, OTM, StoreMate

Biggest achievement in 2 days: 1001inventions

Runners-up: You-Pick, Baddel.net, StoreMate

Most overrated startup: SLOW

Runners-up: Sweet Heaven, Wall Market, QRasher

Funniest startup name: Farefeero

Runners-up: Byse3 bel 3arabeya, Kora Sharab, Khasesny

Other notable mentions:

Easy Charge, Club7, ideas square.

Agree or disagree with my choices, let me know what you think.

I’ve got a great idea, now what?

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:15:00 +0400

This post is intended to the participants of Startup Weekend Alexandria.

You’ve picked your idea and pitched it to a clapping crowd, you’re filled with all the energy and confidence that you will make it happen… don’t get too carried away and know this: what lies ahead of you is your biggest challenge and the essence of the Startup Weekend experience.

Having been down the path of prototyping ideas far too many times, I’m in some position to shed some light on what to do and what to avoid while you’re trying to create the best product and get a shot at winning the 1st prize (or any prize for that matter), here are some thoughts in no particular order:

1. Pick a passionate team: pick team members that share your passion for the idea and think it’s really cool! This passion is the only thing that will keep them going without rest or sleep till the product see the light!

Ask your potential team members: “what exactly do you like about my idea?” and their answers will give them away, whether they really care about it or just looking for a team to join.

2. No presentations: never ever EVER do a presentation of your idea! If you’re planning to use those 54 hours to work on a presentation of your idea, you’ve already lost and I’m afraid that you will learn nothing from this experience.

Startup Weekend is about creating something that works, period!

3. Demo something that works: don’t show people interfaces and narrate how they “should” work. Show something that actually works, where the audience can see you using the product. A mediocre idea that works will always beat an amazing idea that is described in slides.

If you picked an idea that’s too big or broad to be prototyped that quickly, then bad news friend, you’ve picked the wrong idea! But it’s not too late to dump it and work on something else, you’ve already got a team and time to do something.

4. Prototype the core function: you have a couple of days, so no one is expecting a real product here! All you have to do is to show the audience that you got something working that represents the core of your idea, it doesn’t have to be great and good-looking, as long as it works and people can see what’s happening.

5. Kill them all: do not - and I repeat, do not - keep any features that are not part of the core offering!

You might think that you have time, but trust me, you don’t!

You might think that those features are extremely important, they’re not!

Just show something that works well, which is the absolute minimal representation of your idea and you’re set!

6. Function over design: no one is expecting anything beautiful, they want something that works. Afterall, your audience is a bunch of geeks, and a barebones site that works will win them over a stunning site that does nothing.

Once you’re comfortable that your product works fine, you can spend whatever time you have left, making it look better, but not before that!

7. Plan for the worst: whatever can go wrong will go wrong: whatever time you plan for yourself, it’s gonna be cut in half, you might even lose some team members along the way… accept that and have a plan in place for them.

8. Practice your pitch: spend the last couple of hours honing your pitch and demo! Figuring out what to say, how to say it and what to show when you’re saying it! Try to practice on friends and mentors, their feedback always helps.

Even if you have the best product, if you stumble and choke on stage and don’t say the right things, you will lose the audience.

9. Relax: you did your best in the time you were given, so stressing about it in the last few minutes is not gonna change anything, it will only throw you off your flow. Spend the last 30 mins relaxing and clearing your head and you’ll do great.

10. Enjoy: the Startup Weekend experience is all about learning from the process, so keep an open-mind, don’t take things too seriously and most of all have lots of fun!

See you all soon!

I'm back!

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:27:59 +0400

but for how long?!… remains to be seen.

"The conventional wisdom in our business is that you have to grow and keep moving to survive. We..."

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:55:00 +0400

““The conventional wisdom in our business is that you have to grow and keep moving to survive. We never grew, always stayed tiny, and it served us very well over the years, allowing us to pick and choose projects, and keeping our financial independence from our clients.”
- Stefan Sagmeister”

- http://www.behancemag.com/Stefan-Sagmeister-Life-so-Far/5723

"t’s good to be young and full of dreams. Dreams of one day doing something “insanely..."

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:13:47 +0400

“t’s good to be young and full of dreams. Dreams of one day doing something “insanely great”. Dreams of love, beauty, achievement and contribution. But understand they have a life of their own, and they’re not very good at following instructions. Love them, revere them, nurture them, respect them, but don’t ever become a slave to them. Otherwise you’ll kill them off prematurely, before they get the chance to come true.”

- http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004592.html

Be good and good things will happen to you

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:00:30 +0400

If you’re benevolent, people will rally around you: investors, customers, other companies, and potential employees. In the long term the most important may be the potential employees. I think everyone knows now that good hacker are much better than mediocre ones. If you can attract the best hackers to work for you, as Google has, you have a big advantage. And the very best hackers tend to be idealistic. They’re not desperate for a job. They can work wherever they want. So most want to work on things that will make the world better.

Quoted from Paul Graham’s Essay “Be Good“

Be good to boost your morale for hard times

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:56:00 +0400

Morale is tremendously important to a startup—so important that morale alone is almost enough to determine success. Startups are often described as emotional roller-coasters. One minute you’re going to take over the world, and the next you’re doomed. The problem with feeling you’re doomed is not just that it makes you unhappy, but that it makes you stop working. So the downhills of the roller-coaster are more of a self fulfilling prophecy than the uphills. If feeling you’re going to succeed makes you work harder, that probably improves your chances of succeeding, but if feeling you’re going to fail makes you stop working, that practically guarantees you’ll fail.

Here’s where benevolence comes in. If you feel you’re really helping people, you’ll keep working even when it seems like your startup is doomed. Most of us have some amount of natural benevolence. The mere fact that someone needs you makes you want to help them. So if you start the kind of startup where users come back each day, you’ve basically built yourself a giant tamagotchi. You’ve made something you need to take care of.

Quoted from Paul Graham’s Essay “Be Good“