I’m a big fan of reading. I tend to prefer non-fiction to fiction, but over the last few months I’ve been sprinkling in a little fiction. I’m currently working through White Noise by Don Delillo, which is a “postmodern” work about a consumerist society in 1985 struck by tragedy. Its a phenomenally written book that is both clever and thoughtful, and has the benefit of allowing the reader to wax philosophical.  Post-modernism has always interested me ever since I started reading various  critiques in high school and deepened when I took a class on it in college. My one problem is that for a philosophy based on lacking a “center” and predictability, postmodernism is awfully predictable.

Several weeks before that, I finished Master and Margarita which is a delightful satire on Soviet society that details a particular visit of the Devil and his retinue to Moscow and the havoc they create. I’m lucky in that I have had the pleasure of dealing with a lot of Russians in my life, and at one point in time I spoke the language (though not even close to fluently). These experiences allowed me to understand a lot of the humor which would have otherwise been lost.

Aside from my forays into fiction, I’ve stayed true to my  love of non-fiction and have had the chance to read a few business books. The best thing about business books is that they are phenomenally quick reads, given the non-complex nature that most business book will provide. The two books were “Jack Welch Speaks” and “The Republic of Tea”.

Jack Welch Speaks, detailing the former CEO of GE, was a fairly interesting read but didn’t really reveal much that I didn’t already know. Though he doesn’t admit it, it becomes obvious that Jack rules by fear by demanding enormous productivity increases from his employees, and those who don’t improve get the axe. Over the course of his rule, he fired nearly half of the employees while increasing the revenues of the firm several fold. The one piece of advice that I found to be incredible is that if you can’t be number 1 or number 2 in your industry, you shouldn’t be in that industry. Overall, he was perfect for his job and was able to restructure GE in a phenomenal way…someone should really put this guy in charge of the auto industry.

The Republic of Tea (TRoT) on the other hand is a very touchy feely book detailing the marketing design that goes into building a tea business. There’s nothing really of substance that goes on, but the book is about big dreams and giving birth to those dreams. Instead of CEO’s, CMO’s and CTO’s, officers of The Republic are called “Ministers”. There are the Minister of Leaves, the Minister of Enchantment and the Minister of Progress (Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler, formerly of the Banana Republic and Bill Roenzweig, respectively). Despite a crowded market, difficulty in penetrating grocery stores to win shelf space, and critics everywhere, they managed to succeed and build a successful business. There were two important lessons from this book: 1) build something unique that people can be a part of and talk about and 2) have fun with your business. Create a world that is enjoyable and a place of escape.

So moral of all stories: be unique, be the best, and have fun…and watch out for the Devil in Moscow.

This is a great website from The Keyword Academy that actually demonstrates good SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  Check it out here.

SEO isn’t rocket science but it’s great to know and difficult to master. That’s why certain SEO consultants get paid hundreds per hour…

One of my favorite movies, “The Tao of Steve”, has been on HBO fairly regularly lately. This philosophical comedy features an overweight, pot smoking kindergarten teacher who somehow kills it with the ladies due to a teaching he conveniently calls the Tao of Steve. This philosophy consists of:

1. Be desireless (or appear that way)
2. Be excellent  (in her presence)
3. Be gone (we always pursue that which flees from us)

In essence, the philosophy is about being the best you can without ulterior motives, and I can’t help but draw business conclusions out of this.

1. Ultimately, businesses desire money from their consumers but if you are too forward about this, it will scare your consumers off.
2. Create an excellent product: the greatest product of your kind, or if you can’t do that it must appear like the greatest product.
3. Scarcity improves demand. Look at how Apple fans clamor for each little morsel of news that Apple puts out. Or Ubuntu fans. Or any number of other examples. This constant yearning for more generates a phenomenal self-propelled marketing machine.

After the movie, I went on to Wikipedia and researched a bit more of the original Tao Te Ching by Lao tzu and enjoyed reading the synopsis there. I’ll leave you with a quote from the Tao, but what are your thoughts on how this relates to business?

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.

We turn clay to make a vessel;

But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.

We pierce doors and windows to make a house;

And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.

Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.

DeepDyve, a search engine based out of Menlo Park, has just raised $3.9 million from 25 private investors. I think this is another startup that I would pass on investing in. Here’s why:

1) Uh, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo. 3 huge players that all invest tons of money in search. All have the top minds in the world and one of them (achem, Google) makes all of their money from search, so I highly doubt they will risk being out-spent in search.

2) The founders have no experience in search, though they do have experience in bioinformatics. These are biologists, not hardcore computer scientists and search is a highly complicated, highly expensive field.

3) It seems DeepDyve’s value-add is that they index scholarly journals that the other guys typically miss…because it would be very difficult for Google to do the same. Uh, no.

4) Didn’t Cuil already do this? And failed…not because they didn’t do their part and index more of the web, but because nobody cared. Search has become a marketing issue as well and Google’s brand can’t be paralleled. It’s a freakin’ verb that we use every day. It’s embeded in every popular browser.

5) How will they make money? Yahoo can’t even do this well anymore. They are gonna have  to be creative in order to generate any revenue.

All this said, I wish them luck. Better search is better for everyone and competition certainly keeps the big guys on their toes.

*this post has been updated. read below*

A college friend of mine, Richard Crowley, is one of the smartest kids I’ve ever met, and a phenomenal programmer to boot. My college company actually screwed him over royally when he built us a $40k website for only $4k, and despite this, miraculously, he remained my friend. He went on to become a ubernerd in San Francisco at Yahoo! and then OpenDNS, while I moved on to Boston to do consulting and then marketing at WebNotes.

A few months ago we came up with a fun business side project to pursue (more details to come later, but rest assured, it will be awesome), and obviously we put him in charge of the actual work and me in charge of whatever is left over. This “remainder” work includes fun projects like actually incorporating which is kind of an interesting problem in and of itself. The type of corporation really isn’t a debate, as an LLC avoids double taxation of income, allows us flexibility in our operations and we don’t really need to issue stock to outside investors (ie. Venture Capitalists), but where we incorporate gets tricky. Here’s the situation, and here’s why I am choosing to incorporate an LLC in Nevada:

1) I live and work in Massachusetts

2) Rich works in California

3) Both states are extremely expensive to incorporate in. (State Filing Fees: Cali = $800 and MA = $500)

4) Neither state is particularly pro-business.

Given this, I started looking at two other states which are considerably better: Delaware and Nevada. Both are EXTREMELY pro-business and both are pretty cheap, but here’s the rub; if you incorporate in either state and are defined as having a “business nexus” in Massachusetts (effectively meaning you do a lot of business in MA) then you are subject to a $500 annual foreign LLC fee. Crap. So what does it mean to have a “business nexus”? Glad you asked, and here you can find the MA regulations. If you don’t want to read, here are what I consider the most important requirements to be considered as having a nexus:

1) Buying, selling or procuring of services or property in the state

2) Execution of contracts or exercising/enforcing contract rights in the state

3) The maintenance of a place of business (salespeople working from home don’t count)

4) The employment of labor

5) Maintaining stocks of goods in MA

So now I have to figure out if I qualify. This is an internet business so very little will actually be maintained in Massachusetts. I won’t buy, sell or procure services/property specifically within MA. As an internet business, the contracts that we “sign” with our users will be enforced in the state that we incorporate.  I will be working out of my bedroom so no business place will be maintained and I certainly won’t be publicly disclosing my address to anyone. Rich and I are the only “labor” and there’s no “goods” (or tangible goods at least) that we are storing. So we are in the clear!

Now, how did I decide between Nevada and Delaware? EVERYONE seems to incorporate in Delaware, mostly because its been pro-business for so long that every attorney in the world knows Delaware law. Also, in the words of my friend Tom O’Keefe, Nevada Corporations bring up imagery of casinos and bunny ranches. BUT none-the-less, Delaware has annual franchise fees of $250 just to maintain a good standing, whereas Nevada doesn’t have these fees. Couple in the fact that it costs half as much in incorporation fees and we’ve got a winner! If we were looking to take on a bunch of financing, have a lot of employees, etc our decision might have been different, but given our unique circumstances, our business should be good to go.

I’ll be using Intuit’s MyCorporation which is waiving their service fees currently and will allow us to save even more money. [image courtesy of Flikr Creative Commons]

*UPDATE*

It turns out there were a few fees that I missed in my research. Nevada corporations require  you to pay $100 annually for a business license, regardless whether you operate in the state. There is also the requirement that you pay $125 annually to let the state know your membership/partners. Both fees start the year of incorporation, so while there is no franchise tax there are certainly fees. $225 annually for NV vs $250 annually for DE, and Delaware doesn’t make you pay the first year. Sounds like I’m swinging the other way!

2009 has rolled in and I had one of my better New Years celebrations last night: a small potluck dinner with a few friends, lots of wine, and a random upstairs party with the neighbors. Too often, expectations of New Years are overblown and end up disappointing. My low expectations led to a wonderful experience (although my sleep was less than restful given intoxication). Also, like everyone else, I have been considering some new resolutions though have no intentions of actually keeping them. New Years resolutions also remind me of the Calvin and Hobbes quote that goes something like “Why should I change? I’m perfect. The world should change for me!”

Anyways, what do I hope to do in 2009?

1) I’ve been reading a book about every 2 weeks for the last 2 months and I’d like to keep this up.

2) Learn more Bulgarian so that I can have basic conversations with my girlfriend in her original tongue. Bulgarian pickup lines are also a must.

3) Keep my room far more immaculate than it is. Yes, this sounds stupid, but at least its a resolution I can actually keep!

Thats it. 3 resolutions that can be actually achieved. Hopefully.

I finally upgrade my version of WordPress to version 2.7 and low and behold, everything worked! It was quite the experience, and I managed to not completely screw everything up. Now I get to play around with it and see what is new…Perhaps a new theme is in the works?