Tom Tancredi

Outnumbered about 7 Billion to 1.....

Subscribe for updates:

Back from the Vegas convention!

By Leave a Comment

Sorry for the lag in the posts! I just got back from Vegas, demo-ing D&T’s latest product BuildersBidNetwork.com at the ICSC convention.

 

Here’s what I learned at the convention

1.) People tend to “trust” products over services. I think it’s because products have clear limitations, clear boundaries as to what they can/cannot do. Whereas with services, it’s a bit murky as to where the boundaries are.

2.) Every digital product I saw at the convention was Service as a Software (SaaS), in my book. Including BBN.

3.) The age of home-brewed tech is still not over. There’s a lot of great, weird new tech that people are selling….

4.) Big-boy conventions usually end the day with a happy-hour at someone’s booth. Drinks are straight legit.

5.) As expected, all the real selling happens before or after the hours of the convention, with personal meetings.

 

 

 

Post #3 Why civil unrest is inevitable if we don’t create jobs

By 1 Comment

So here’s the quick sketch of reality in America:

13 million people without jobs (including the low participation rate)  – 8.1% unemployment rate in America

2 Trillion Dollars of Corporate and Private Sector earnings,  sitting on the sidelines, collecting no interest.

If you invested all 2 Trillion dollars into creating 13 million jobs, you’d have average salary/benefits of $153k/person. But better yet, the majority of the investment will bring back a higher return on investment that 0.1%. So the rich get richer! But not by much – perhaps on average 5-8% of their investment, while the middle and lower classes can see their lifestyle and salaries rise 1.5-3x whatever it is now.

Okay, so perhaps it’s unrealistic to invest all the money. But what about just 25%? $500 billion injected in startups, new projects, new technologies….which will beget others to take the plunge and pull in their sweat equity. Once the pump is primed there’s no stopping: innovation spurs competition, and in order for companies to stay current and not get left behind they’ll have to spend $$. Or they’ll end up like Kodak. Really, we just need a few industry leaders to make a few big splashes and show how “easy it was” to make the rest of the pack follow. We – the entrepreneurs, the corporate managers, the people – just need to say “yes” to unlock all that frozen capital.

Well, we also need good ideas,  well-educated specialists and a host of morally-sound leaders with long-term views.

So what will happen if we DON’T do this? If the capital just stays frozen, and the unemployed stay unemployed, and the gulf continues to widen? Well, then the incentives to do good work will be misaligned. The American Dream is about social mobility, and with capital locked in the 1%, social mobility stops being possible. It’s as simple as that. The social cohesion in the country will fray even more; being able to relate to each others’ viewpoints will dwindle, political parties will continue to polarize, and we will be facing some sort of civil unrest (potentially an escalation to civil war). It’s a historical cycle – every time in history the haves vs the have-nots gets too strained, there’s a revolution and it gets messy. Think  of France in the 18th century, Russia in the 19th (and 20th) – the only way China avoided a civil war in the past 20 years is that they have a HUGE emphasis to discourage dissent, by whatever means possible.

That’s what I think. I don’t think anyone can honestly say we should keep lurching from crisis to crisis, and putting on the band-aids on society. If anyone plans on living in America for the next 20-45 years in relative peace, we need to step up the initiative and create jobs, together.

 

USA is in the top right corner.

Post #2 – The Job, Jobs, and Jobbers

By Leave a Comment

So once you convince people/corporations with money to do what they already want to do, then you need to hire people to do those projects.

Here’s where you hire people. The people you’re going to hire are young, they’re social-media aware (they’ve been using it for all their adult lives, after all), and they are eager to learn new jobs. Which is GREAT, because most of the in-demand jobs of 2012 didn’t exist 5 years ago. Think I’m crazy – then tell me who was hiring a social media manager back in 2007? Who was developing iPhone apps? Oh wait – Facebook’s only been relevant for the past 3 years and iTunes started allowing indy developers to submit apps back in 2008.

So you’re in charge and as such you have 3 things to do

1.) convince locked-up money to flow again (talking about corporations)

2.) train up your team

3.) have a plan in place for the company, the team, and yourself

 

The first point we talked about in Post #1. The second point – training your team – is tough. Basically, you’re an around-the-clock teacher. Look into skillshare.com or codeschool for a myriad of classes to help yourself and the team, but primarily you’re going to be training people after-hours, off the clock. This is exhausting but essential. Investing in your people will pay off in two ways: 1.) they’ll do things *your way* and 2.) it solidifies trust and loyalty. The difference between consulting and a business is the ability of the owner to train up and hire others, not just himself/herself.

The third point is to have a plan for your people. You need a 6-12 month roadmap for people, even if that roadmap never comes into fruition. If you don’t have a vision for that person’s future, they probably don’t have much of one for your company….so don’t bother hiring. The roadmap should have goals, milestones to achieve those goals, and a listing of challenges that are on the road in front of the milestones. This is the same vision to have for yourself and your company.

I am going on the assumption that you’re not a “fail-fast” start-up where you’re constantly experimenting, hiring, and pivoting. I really hate failing – fast or slow.

 

Next post we’re going to talk about why it’s important to job-create, and why in the next few years we need to do it PRONTO

 

And more people keep quitting......

 

 

HOW TO CREATE JOBS {POST #1 “The Current Landscape in America”}

By 1 Comment

Post #1: The current landscape in America (or anywhere in the modern world, really)

In 2009 New York was going to hell in a handbasket. Century-old firms were gone within a few weeks – Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, etc., the stock market was in a free-fall, people were talking about the end of world, MSNBC was on a doom orgy for 11-months straight.  I don’t have to tell you, you were there. So in the middle of all this catastrophe, Dom and I decided to quit our jobs and start a new company.

Why?

Because here’s the thing: in the recession of 2008-2009 in NYC had very peculiar characteristics. For one, a lot of the people who got fired were highly-skilled, high net-worth professionals saddled with debt and unable to move away for a variety of reasons. So all these highly-skilled, high net-worth people, concentrated in a dense city, had nothing to do…

Cue in boredom.  And with the idle hands, came out an explosion of start-ups and meet-ups. Gilt Groupe, Thrillist, AOL, Wanderfly, a sh*tload of financial data-mining products, so many weird e-commerce platforms and products (what the heck is Kickstarter?!)  And then social media, which was ramping up in popularity, came on big-time right around 2007 – 2009. Media giants found a disgustingly-cheap way to get engagement with their customers. Why spend $150k on a billboard on a highway that may or may not get conversion, when you can spend $20k and DEFINITELY get engagement with thousands of Facebook/Twitter fans, all who are talking and all whose behavior is trackable? App creators like Zynga jumped into the platform and made millions. And then..mobile dropped, and with mobile (iOS, Android, HTML5) the market surged again. Everyone saw iPhone apps as a new market to make money – again, people with some vision and a bit of code made millions.

So if you look at the tech landscape as a Yukon gold rush, think about this: who makes all the money in the gold rush? A few lucky prospectors (entrepreneurs), the mining giants (Big Media, gaming companies), and the general stores that sold picks, axes, and all the equipment (re: digital studios).

Hey, DOM & TOM’s a digital studio…at a time when social and mobile spiked, and all the talented highly-skilled people had the freedom to dream about making new wealth other than finance and consulting. But all gold rushes end eventually, right?

Well, there’s another set of clients who have missed out on the massive tech surge, who are now (2011 and onward) coming back to the marketplace, and who have deeper pockets than anyone before them. For the sake of broad strokes, let’s call them “Corporations.” All the major corporations out there have massive marketing and tech budgets, and departments whose teams had their budgets slashed to nothing. All this time they’ve basically sat on the sidelines while social and mobile surged by them. Don’t get me wrong – Priceline, Hearst Media, Viacom did dip a toe in the markets. But it’s nothing compared to what they WILL be doing in the next 5 to 10 years.

Think about it: what happens to the VP of Marketing, or the VP of IT, who used to generate and implement their ideas yearly? Well, they didn’t stop having those great ideas. They shelved those ideas, year after year, implemented the smaller ones, and waited for the day that they’d get their budgets back….

And that time has come. Corporate profits are higher than ever. They’re sitting on piles of cash and they want to start getting more on their investments. The people who can create jobs in this country will have to do so by convincing all the money that sitting on the sidelines (roughly $1.5 Trillion in private funds in America alone!) to jump back in and invest in America Inc. Those people will be visionary, they’ll be tech-savvy, and they’ll be young.

More to come on Wednesday, when we go into the nature of these people, the true job-creators, and the employees that they’ll hire.

As always, please feel free to comment or share. Please note that this is Post #1 of a 3-part post “HOW TO CREATE JOBS”. For more information please click on the link http://www.tomtancredi.com/2012/05/05/how-to-create-jobs-preamble/.

 

Woops - as of Mar 2012, it's more like $2 Trillion that corporations are sitting on, getting a 2% return on their money...

HOW TO CREATE JOBS! {Preamble}

By 1 Comment

Hi friends,

I’m working on a series of posts that I’m going to tentatively title:  How to Create  Jobs. 

It’s a 3-part post that will be published next Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Post #1: The current landscape in America (or anywhere in the modern world, really)

I’m going to do a cursory dive into what I saw happening in 2009, when I first coFounded my company with my brother , where we are now in 2012, and what we’re facing in the next three-to-five years. Disclaimer: I’m looking into a tech-specific sector of the economy, but I have a theory that by 2020 most of what we consider “the tech industry” will be so pervasive in the other industries that it’ll be  meaningless to distinguish the “true” tech industry from any other industry. But that’s for another post.

Post #2: What it takes to create a job, and keep them

I’m going to talk about the talent pool we have right now, what it takes to actually create a job, and how to make sure that job will last. I’m focusing on people in their 20s and 30s, and not worrying about skilled/unskilled labor in their 40s-60s.

Post #3: Why it’s the #1 priority for EVERYONE to job-create immediately

I’m going to make the claim that the inequalities of modern society, specifically in America with the 1% pitted against the 99%, can be solved by radical job-creation in the marketplace, which will better re-distribute wealth  than any other tax or stimulus program from the government. And why if we fail we’re probably heading towards severe civil discord the likes which we have not seen in 175 years.

This is a topic I am sincerely passionate about. I encourage as many of you reading in the next few days to comment, share and participate in any other way you deem fit.

 

We are on the right track, but we can do better

What little I know about Leadership…

By 1 Comment

This is all I know about leadership

1.) Leadership has a sense of gravity to it. If you think of Leadership as an element, think of it as one of the denser elements like Tungsten or Gold (or Osmium!). If placed at the top of an organization leadership will flow downward throughout the company. If it’s stuck at the base, or somewhere in the middle, the odds of getting this element to the top of the organization is going to take massive amounts of effort.

2.) Leadership can’t be delegated, like a role or new job assignment.

3.) If there’s a lack of Leadership people will try to fill that void as best they can, and if they can’t they’ll leave for somewhere else where Leadership exists.

4.) Leaders generally have a lot tough choices but most of the time they’re making a lot of boring choices.

5.) Leadership is based in trust, clarity of purpose, discipline and imagination (sometimes humor)

6.) Leadership is essential to running anything for any duration of time.

7.) Leadership is a lonely trade and the best leaders in history were very lonely people. Ironically, they were also very empathetic to people around them.

8.) Leaders will be criticized no matter what course of action they take.

9.) Leadership is encouraged in sports and business, and rarely in theater, writing, or music. No wonder the Arts suffer systemic problems with programs, particularly in funding.

10.) There is no unified plan to raise, train, and prepare tomorrow’s Leaders in America. I wonder if that’s the marketplace working at its finest or if we’re screwed.

 

Tools of the trade for anyone trying to make friends and influence people....

Are we lucky?

By 3 Comments

I had a great conversation with a fellow competitor the other day. Yes, competitors from EVERY industry talk to each other. In the digital dev world, today’s competitor might be tomorrow’s partner, depending on the project.  He and I were talking about how much work there was, how our companies were just expanding, and how successful we were in our business.

And then he said, “man, we sure were lucky.”

Working 18+ hours a day for years…managing triple % year-of-year growth…coordinating between several offices…Look, I worked my a$$ off. That’s my point. I worked for this success/failure/whatever it’s this company is and going to be. I earned it. I’m proud of it. This wasn’t easy – stop saying we’re lucky.

And on and on I ranted at my fellow competitor.

To which, HE replied….

“It’s digital development in a tech-boom. You don’t have to be good – you have to be present. EVERYONE wants what we’re doing. It’s too hard to figure out if we’re actually good at our trades, because there’s so much demand and no one can really tell the difference between the good or the bad. Anyone out of college can land a cushy gig at the next big-startup… We’re lucky because we’re at least proficient at our trades, and we’re in the middle of a virtual gold-rush. Nothing wrong with that.”

And I have to admit, he’s kind of right. If I took an honest look at the business landscape…we really are lucky. I don’t have to do cold-calls for business. I don’t have to manage a company in a down-industry. If I compare myself to someone in construction or print, I’m not dealing with the challenges those industries face – massive layoffs, diminishing revenue models, ossified command structures, etc. But I have other ones – this industry is really competitive. I need to know how to retain, train, and attract highly-sought and skilled talent; I need to know how to manage growth (invest the profits, or share in the spoils?); and i need to have an ever-changing plan for what is the goal for the next 3-5 year , etc. In those areas, I feel confident that I’m doing a competent job, compared to my competitors. I feel like luck helped, but no one’s luck sustains for years.

I do believe growing a business, even a start-up, is not a crap-shoot. Lotto winners are lucky. I would never say winning the lottery is a good long-term strategy.

 

although if I DID win the lottery, I'd definitely do what this guy did. Numberz4life!

I love my clients

By Leave a Comment

I really, really love my clients at the company. I mean, in the past I’ve worked at companies where it’s usually an  “us vs them” mentality – management vs employees, company vs clients, you vs all. But that’s not how I feel these days about my clients. For whatever reason, it doesn’t matter what industry they’re in (from food conglomerates to digital media studios), what types of project’s they’re working on (mobile, social, web, design, whatever…) , or what state of their company (start-up vs established and all greys inbetween).

I don’t know how we got lucky, but I think it might have to do that we a.) do good work and b.) like attracts like. If you’re good people, good people want to work with you.

If anyone reading has any thoughts on what makes good clients go to good people, feel free to comment. I’d love to hear from anyone else on their thoughts. Is D&T just lucky?

 

all D&T clients - you're Da Bes

Keep Calm and DOM & TOM

By Leave a Comment

When you’re dealing with the day-to-day crises, it’s hard to figure out if there’s a fundamental problem with the company, or if this is the rocky process of a high-growth company. My company’s grown 300% in the last year (doesn’t that sound WONDERFUL?!) alone. This year we’re trending towards another 100%, by some metrics. It’s still an incredible ride. But with more people, and more money, the problems that arise are not ones that really occurred in the past. In the early days, when things sucked (and yes, I have no hopes of ever going back to the “good ol’ days” in a startup. “Good ol’ days” are the most terrifying times in any startup’s time…) people’s morale was steady because of a combo bunker-mentality and new-to-the-company. Now striding into year #3, I’m noticing that there’s a lot of matters that are putting more emotional weight on team-mates shoulders than ever before.

Here’s a few pain-points I’ve noticed lately.

Recognition of work

The good, deranged people in the company took a risk and joined in your delusional madness. They probably made your company succeed. They want/need to be recognized for that. It’s great celebrate “wins” but it  needs to be more specific with each person, not just the company.

Creating a Corporate hierarchy

A pool of friends/colleagues are pulling together, and to a certain extent in a start-up’s lifecycle, the Org chart is relatively flat. What happens when you take this great, kinetic team and start select a choice few to oversee the work of the others? Or worse – bring in outside resources to lead them? This is a difficult tango and one that takes enormous planning.

Say in the company

People are the company, the company is the not people. People create the culture and spread that culture. Startup founders should be prepared to make sure they’re open/ready for people to have increasing say in “their” company. It’s not the founders’ company anymore, at least it’s not JUST the founders….it’s everyone in the company.

Sharing in the rewards

If we win, we win together. If we lose, we lose together. If we make money…

At the end of the day, whether you’re a founder or a team-mate in a startup, and the start-up is doing well but it’s rocky for you, I recommend patience. Success in the early years is hard to nurture and incredibly fragile. Just because you’ve already tolerated a road of mistakes does not mean you’ve “earned” that you/your team-mates/your company stop making mistakes. Whatever is your position, I fervently urge to Keep Calm.

 

The Blame’s on Me (the Blame’s on You)

By 1 Comment

People in positions of power are afflicted with a severe problem: they don’t get yelled at often enough. Very rarely will they hear how they’re failing; how they can do better; or anything how their choices impact negatively/positively.

We as leaders need to be empathetic, willing and eager to hear what our colleagues have to say.

We as colleagues and coworkers need to be confident to provide direct, constructive criticism.

I err on the side that “the blame’s on me” whenever there is an internal issue, colleague matter, or generally bad news.

Here’s multi-billionaire entrepreneur Ben Horowitz’ assessment on messing up:

Even if you know what you are doing, things go wrong. Things go wrong, because building a multi-faceted human organization to compete and win in a dynamic, highly competitive market turns out to be really hard. If CEOs were graded on a curve, the mean on the test would be 22 out of a 100. This kind of mean can be psychologically challenging for a straight A student. It is particularly challenging, because nobody tells you that the mean is 22.

When people in my company would complain about something or other being broken such as the expense reporting process, I would joke that it was all my fault. The joke was funny, because it wasn’t really a joke. Every problem in the company was indeed my fault. As the founding CEO, every hire and every decision that the company ever made happened under my direction. Unlike a hired gun that comes in and blames all of the problems on the prior regime, there was literally nobody for me to blame. 

I’m not a CEO but I am a CoFounder of the company. Ben makes it hit home in his assessment of the challenges Founders/CEOs get every single day. It’s a great article and definitely worth reading.

I’m going to make a “call to action” for everyone out there – figure out one major problem in your career, figure out the various stakeholders and their stances, and plot out a plan to resolve. I know most people are not CEOs or Founders, but  you can be the “Founder” of your career.

Ultimately, the blame’s on me. It’s also on us. It’ll only get better when we work to make it better, and recognize we need each other to make it better.

The mantra is "Do Good, Be Good" not "Do Average, Blame Others"