The Power of Being Reasonable and Ignoring the "Know It All" - 12/11/2009 - 4:17 PM:
One of the most important skills an entrepreneur can have is the ability to sound reasonable. That seems like a fairly basic requirement, at first, and it is; what that really boils down to is that your role as an entrepreneur is to be excited about what you do, while avoiding coming off as ignorant, manipulative, or arrogant. It also includes not being too self-assured, too resistant to criticism, too outlandish in your expectations, or too insane. It would be ideal to not sound insane at all, but let's face it – insanity is what gets people into being entrepreneurs in the first place, so that's hopeless.
I read a study once that changed how I look at the advice I collect from people, and also the advice I give to people, and it directly relates to how you define “reasonable”. More specifically, it changed how I look at strong criticism and strong opinion, which is something you'll encounter a great deal of if you're working on anything remotely interesting ...
Read More
Why Google? - 10/14/2009 - 11:02 AM:
Therin, a long standing member of the BookLamp.org community, asked me a question earlier that I thought was worth promoting to the main page. Her question was, "Why Google?"
As things have progressed with the project, that's a question I've been asked in private, but never answered in public. Why did the original quest start with Google?
I don't know if my reasoning for picking the companies I did is a credit to me or a boon, but it does illustrate part of the ways that I think. My response to Therin is below:
________________
There were three obvious companies that could have been considered for CanGoogleHearMe.com. Google, Amazon, and at the time, Microsoft. All three were actively involved in full-text book scanning projects, which was the prerequisite for being considered. All three were working with content from multiple publishers, which was also a tremendous advantage.
Of the three, Microsoft was consider...
Read More
The Three Weapons of the Start-up. Hello to Popular Science. - 09/28/2009 - 6:19 PM:
Every time Paul and I leave on some sort of business trip, it seems someone mentions us unexpectedly. We just got off the plane in New York, and I'm told that BookLamp was mentioned in this month's Popular Science. I haven't seen a copy myself, yet, but I've been getting e-mails about it all day. It makes me wish we could move forward with the Reader's Project a bit more aggressively - we've had access to a fairly large commercial database of books for a while (10,000+) that we haven't been able to roll out publicly for a variety of reasons. I know how lame it is to say something like, "Man, I wish I could show you all the cool things we have going on behind the scenes..."... but, well, I wish I could show you all the cool things we have going on behind the scenes. At some point we'll roll this out as a functional, non-beta service - though the form it takes may be different than what it is now. And it's likely to not be our first milestone, depending on things like... well, like...
Read More
Why Start a Startup? Dan Moves to Idaho. Glory is Ugly. - 09/18/2009 - 2:04 PM:
About a day ago I was asked to sit on a panel on the life and times in an American start-up. Boise State University had a group of German students interested in learning about different areas of business here in the U.S., and I agreed to the interview. I participated in this same event last year, with different students, and it always involves a lot of questions about how you got started, why you do what you do, and the advantages and disadvantages of working for yourself. It also inadvertently forced me to compare how I answered those questions last year, one year into the venture, with how I answer them now, more than two and a half years into this thing we call BookLamp and Novel Projects.
What's it like? What's it like working at a job that simply won't let you go home at night; that either keeps you at work until 7 or 8 p.m. on a regular basis, or failing that, keeps you awake until 1 or 2 in the morning mulling over the things you have to get done the next day?...
Read More
New York, Ice Skating, and Dooooooooooooom... - 07/31/2009 - 6:01 AM:
By Aaron Stanton
(the title is funnier if you're an Invader Zim fan...)
Dan has a much more technical style to his posts than I do, but I suppose it gives you another lens to see into what we do. Not only do we jump up and down in the parking lots of large international companies, but we also spend a lot of time approaching books differently than most people. In Dan's case, through numbers.
As always between my posts, a great deal has been happening. Our trip to New York was quite positive, and we'll be returning, soon. New York is quickly becoming very familiar to me; I no longer need to check the subway map every time I fly into the airport. I just know the way. :) When I was in high school, I remember writing somewhere that I'd know I'd become successful when I could afford to fly to New York City spontaneously for no purpose other than to go ice skating in Central Park. (I was an odd duck in high school...)
Every t...
Read More
New York - 07/13/2009 - 4:51 PM:
By: Dan Bowen
This week Aaron and crew find themselves in New York for follow-ups with the many publishers who've shown interest in BookLamp. Actually, to date, I can't think of a single firm we've approached that has strictly dismissed the potential that BookLamp offers. Aaron's pitch has been that BookLamp is an 'un-scary' technology for the publishing industry... it's not that unbelievable to think that the subjective field of literature could be a bit turned off by the empirical approach that BookLamp offers.
Publishers have been surprisingly open to BookLamp's ideas, but are looking for solid ground on which to apply them in their current practices. Lately the industry has been suffering a bit, due largely to the internet content and the market's transition to electronic texts. This is precisely where BookLamp fits. Though these are tough times for consumers and the industry alike, publishers will survive - market demand ensures it. This is cert...
Read More
Boise, Tallahassee, and Books - 07/03/2009 - 2:33 PM:
By: Dan Bowen
Hello world, my name is Dan Bowen. I am a Data Analyst for Novel Projects (BookLamp), and have been with Aaron and crew for about a year now. Things in Boise seem to get busier by the day, so Aaron has asked me to pick up on some of these posts.
Currently, I am in Tallahassee, FL and plan to be living and working full-time in the Boise office by the end of the summer. I have a bit of a different perspective on things being at a distance, but I will do my best to tell it how it is. This post will serve as a bit of an introduction, with a few updates; so here goes...
Being so far from home base has its downsides. Particularly when it comes to communication. Skype has been my daily commute since last September and it's great (very enabling), but not like being in the office where I can throw a comment to someone, without distracting everyone else. First, I can't be sure how loud I am in the room through Skype, so I have les...
Read More
