Nathan Lustig

Travelogue Cape Town: Five Days During the 2010 World Cup

Category : Travel
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Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts about my experiences at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. You can read the first post, Twenty Days in South Africa for the World Cup, to get an overview of what we did while we were there and the second post is about the soccer and the third post about is five days in Durban, the fourth post is about my safari in Madikwe Nature Reserve.   This post is about five days in Cape Town.  I realized that I had written a post about my trip to Cape Town, but somehow didn’t put it live until now.  Oops.

We flew into Cape Town the day after the US beat Algeria on a last second goal in Pretoria and on a huge high.  The flight into the Cape Town airport is beautiful.  It was a clear day and we were able to see Table Mountain with Cape Town spilling downhill toward the clear blue ocean.  We got our bags and drove toward the city.  In Pretoria, the woman who owned the bed and breakfast referred us to her friend who runs a guest house in Cape Town.  As we got closer, we realized that we were staying at the foot of Table Mountain, with amazing views of the city.

Cape Town Harbor, Table Mountain in Background

The first night, we drove down to the harbor and took in the scene.  The Netherlands were playing Cameroon and the entire harbor was orange.  Many white South Africans have Dutch ancestry and were supporting the Oranje, so it was a really fun scene.  We watched Italy lose to Slovakia in a packed restaurant with amazing harbor/table mountain views and then I walked over toward the stadium to buy a ticket.  I ended up getting a ticket right on the midfield stripe for face value.  Green Point stadium was beautiful and the game, although meaningless, was really fun.

The next day, I went to an Internet cafe and tried to find out how much it would cost me to fly to Rustenburg to see the USA vs. Ghana round of 16 match and found a cheap flight/car rental.  It was too good to pass up, so I made plans to leave Andy and Katie later that night and flew to Joburg with my sleeping bag, USA gear and enough money to buy a ticket at one of the bars.

Before I left, we climbed Cape Town’s iconic Table Mountain.  It was a tougher hike than I thought it would be, but completely worth it.  Although it was a little cloudy when we got to the top, you could see Cape Town on one side and the Cape of Good Hope on the other.  We could see the huge waves crashing into the Cape from both sides of the Atlantic and Indian oceans even though we were miles away and a few thousand feet up.

Top of Table Mountain, Overlooking Cape Town

In the airport, I met two other Americans who had the same plan.  We ended up hanging out the entire time and it was a great time and completely worth it, even though the US lost in extra time.  I flew back to Cape Town the next day and Andy and Katie were waiting for me with a picnic they had prepared from a local farmers market.  We decided to drive around the Cape, while taking a break for lunch to watch the Germany/England match.

We drove to Camps Bay, Hout Bay, Simon Town, Kalk Bay and all of the little towns along the coast.  Each had a different feel and different geography.  It was a beautiful drive, highlighted by penguins and an amazing sunset over Hout Bay.  We went back to our apartment and walked down to a neighborhood bar to watch the night game, ending an awesome day.

Penguins!

The next day, we went out to wine country.  Cape Town and the surrounding areas, including Stellenbosch, produce some of the best wines in the world and we spent the day going from winery to winery sampling the best.  Cape Town’s wine country is beautiful and very close together.  We went to 5-6 wineries and then ended the night in Stellenbosch, which seemed like it was South Africa’s version of Madison.

Wine Tasting

Our last day in Cape Town, it pored.  We went to Bo-Kaap, which is a high area overlooking the city.  It is hope to mostly Cape Malays, which are the descendants of Dutch imported Indonesian slaves in from the 1600-1800s.  We had a great meal overlooking the city and then explored a spice shop where we bought some awesome curry spices to bring back to the US.  My favorite was “mother in law curry” which was their hottest.  I’ve cooked with it a bunch of times since I’ve been back and it’s one of the better curry blends I’ve tasted.  Bo-Kaap is also home to the iconic multicolored houses that Cape Town is famous for.  After our trip to the Bo-Kaap, we drove to the airport to start our 34 our journey home via Dubai and New York.  Cape Town was one of the highlights of our trip and I’d love to come back some day.

Sunset, Looking South

How to Make an Introduction

Category : Entrepreneurship
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I get asked to connect people all the time.  I also ask others to connect me to people every single day.  Getting introductions is an incredibly powerful way to get to know people who can help you with your business or in your personal life.  It’s also great to be able to give an introduction to two people who will mutually benefit from knowing each other.  Email introductions are the most common intros these days, so it’s important to know how to both introduce two people and respond to introductions.

Introducing Two People

I like to keep it really simple.  Here’s a mock introduction between my business partner Jesse Davis and our friend/Madison entrepreneur Steve Faulkner of Real Time Txts.

To: Jesse Davis, Steve Faulkner

From: Nathan Lustig

Subject: Introducing You

Jesse, meet Steve Faulkner.  Steve is, among other entrepreneurial endeavors, the founder of Real Time Txts, a service that texts subscribers free drink offers at local bars in real time.  He also wrote an awesome article about Madison entrepreneurship that was featured in Techcrunch.

Steve, meet Jesse Davis.  Jesse is the cofounder of Entrustet, a website that allows you to decide if you’d like your digital assets transferred to heirs or deleted when you die.  He is also active in the Madison startup scene and Capital Entrepreneurs and writes a great entrepreneurship blog.  Jesse is interested in connecting with you to see if there is a potential partnership for Real Time Txts and Entrustet.

I wanted to connect you guys so you could figure out how to make it happen.  I’ll let you take it from here.

Thanks,
Nathan

Key Points to Remember

  1. Use the format above to introduce both people to each other
  2. Include links to each person’s business, unless the person is well known
  3. Include a sentence at the end to say why you’re connecting both people to each other
  4. Include a sentence that tells the two people you’ve just introduced that it’s up to them to take it farther

Responding to an Introduction

It’s fairly straight forward.  Click reply all and thank the introducer for making the intro.  Introduce yourself to the other person and go from there.  It’s important to include the introducer in the first reply so that they know that you’ve actually responded.  If I’ve taken the time to introduce two people, I want to know that they’ve actually taken the next step to connect.  After the first email, feel free to leave the introducer off further conversations.  Here’s a sample reply:

To: Jesse Davis, Nathan Lustig

From: Steve Faulkner

Nathan, Thanks for intro.

Jesse, many people have told me that we should meet as well.  As Nate said, I’m the founder of Real Time Txts, a service that sends people texts about free drinks at Madison area bars.  Do you have some time this week to chat via phone or meet up for coffee so we can discuss a potential partnership?

Thanks,

Steve

I hope this helps!  What do you think?  Do you use this format or do you have a different format that works well for you?

The James White Out: How 10,000 Students Brought Blank White Paper to Wisconsin vs. Ohio State

Category : Entrepreneurship, Sports
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On Saturday, #18 ranked Wisconsin defeated #1 Ohio State at Camp Randall.  I’ve been to a ton of games at Camp Randall over the years, including a last second win against #14 Michigan and wins over other highly ranked opponents, but Saturday night was by far the loudest I’ve ever heard Camp Randall.  But I don’t want to talk about what happened on the field, but rather what happened in the student section.

Whenever James White, Wisconsin’s freshman phenom running back, touched the ball, a huge percentage of the student section held up a blank 8.5×11 sheet of white paper.  It looked like the university had gotten cheap because of the recession and handed out paper, instead of white towels, like they had when Ron Dayne broke the career rushing record against Iowa in 1999.  In reality, the University had nothing to do with it.

Ron Dayne Breaking NCAA Record

How did 10,000+ students all get the idea to bring small pieces of computer paper into the stadium for the biggest game of the season?  How did everyone know to do it?  I was lucky enough to learn the whole story and will share it with you.

James White burst onto the scene in Wisconsin’s first three non conference games against UNLV, San Jose State and Arizona State.  Although he did not have huge stats, you could see he had the makeup to be a special player.  My friends Alex Connelly, Dylan Mathieu and Max Rosen wanted to create some sort of cheer for whenever James White did something good and came up with the idea to bring in blank pieces of white paper into the game.  So for the Austin Peay game on September 25th, Alex and his friends snuck about 50 sheets of paper into the stadium and gave the paper out to the people sitting around them.  Most of the people threw paper airplanes, mostly because the Badgers killed Austin Peay 70-3.  White had 146 yards and 4 TDs and suddenly the entire student section knew who he was.

Two weeks later, the Badgers came home to battle rivals Minnesota.  This time, they snuck an entire ream of paper into the game and passed the paper out to their friends.  I remember looking for them from my seat in Section P and saw about 3 rows of people waving white paper in the bottom of Section N in the student section.  It looked pretty cool, but it was not viral yet.

Wisconsin played Ohio State one week later and the events of that week are a great case study about how an idea goes viral.  On Sunday, a student who had sat behind Al and his friends at the Minnesota game created a Facebook Event called James WHITE OUT.  During the week, more students and alums joined the event and the buzz grew on Twitter, too.  UW student Caleb Sherman was the earliest Twitter adopter I can find, tweeting to the UW Athletic Department, Chancellor and others UW organizations.

By Monday, it made it to the Badger Football Board on Buckyville with a three page thread called Students Planning James WHITE out.  On Tuesday, it made it to the Scout.com Badger Message board with a thread called White Out.  Other students and organizations joined in on Twitter all week.

Photo Credit: BadgerNation

By Tuesday, the Facebook event had over 6000 people attending had reached another 8,000 more and the Badger Herald wrote about the James White Out.  On Wednesday and Thursday, ESPN’s nightly college football program mentioned the James White Out on the air and Sports Illustrated.com mentioned the White out.

On Friday, I called my brother, who excitedly said “did you hear, bring a piece of white paper to the game on Saturday?”  I hadn’t heard anything else since I talked with Alex and his friends after the Minnesota game assumed they had been promoting somehow.  I was wrong.

On Saturday morning, I biked over to my brother’s for a tailgate and he told me about the white out again.  I told him my friends had started it, but he told me about the ESPN and Sports Illustrated mentions and the Facebook event, which now had over 7,500 attendees.  Over 18,000 people had been invited and most of the UW student population knew about the White Out.  I was concerned that the UW or Camp Randall would step in and not allow the White Out to happen, but I noticed that even the official UW twitter account was talking about the White Out and encouraging it.

I went over to my friends’ tailgate where I talked with Alex.  He had a full ream of paper ready to go.  I told him that my brother had seen the white paper idea on a Facebook event with 7500 confirmed attendees, mentions on Sports Illustrated and ESPN and that most of the student section would have white paper.  He didn’t believe me.  He thought I was messing with him.  I kept telling him the story, but I don’t think he believed me fully until we got into the stadium.  On James White’s first carry, a 70% of the student section held up white pieces of paper.  It looked amazing.

Photo credit: BadgerNation

The White out continued for the entire game, culminating in a huge celebration when James White ran for the game clinching touchdown midway through the 4th quarter.  The party was on.  When Blake Sorenson intercepted Tyrelle Pryor’s desperation pass to end the game, everyone ripped up their paper and created a confetti shower.  It was an amazing site to see and showed how a small idea can grow exponentially with the help of the internet.

James White Winning Score, White Paper in Background (photo credit http://www.pbase.com/mylesl/2010fbosu)

The James White Out is a perfect case study to demonstrate how a new idea, video or meme goes viral.  You can use these ideas to help your ideas spread more quickly and you can also tweak your ideas to make them more sticky and therefore more viral.  If you’re interested in how this works, check out Derek Sivers’ awesome blog post about how to start a movement.  Many of the same principals apply here, too.  Here’s a quick summary of how The James White Out went viral at the University of Wisconsin:

1. Come up with sticky, innovative idea

Alex, Dylan and Max come up with idea to bring blank white sheets of paper to show support for James White.

2. Early adopters become evangelizers and spread the new idea

Student sitting behind Alex, Dylan and Max at Minnesota game started Facebook event and invited all of his friends.  Other students tweet to UW, Athletic Department, Chancellor and others to support the idea.  Guys with original idea have no control over this spread, and in fact, did not know it was happening.  You need to have such a sticky idea, that others want to share it.  It should be funny, easy to do, innovative or just downright interesting.

3. Niche Community Adopt idea

As Facebook event grows, niche Badger sports communities like Buckyville and Scout.com spread the message.  After the original idea, you don’t know where your ideas will go, but if they are not hitting the niche communities who you are trying to attract, you can always try to seed these communities.

4. National Influencers adopt idea

ESPN, Sports Illustrated and other national influencers share the message, reaching millions of people.  If you haven’t had any success with steps 1-3, you really can’t go right to step 4, unless you are a really big company.  Even then it will likely backfire.

5. Adoption

10,000+ students bring white paper to student section and hold it up when James White gets a carry.  The guys with the original idea still have no idea that their idea has gone viral.  They think it is a joke when I tell them on Saturday, about 2 hours before kickoff.  It shows that when you have a great idea, it will spread if you make it easy enough for others to jump in.

6. Mainstream adoption

News articles, tweets, and other mentions from people who were watching on TV or heard about the White Out, but did not attend the game.

I’m Blogging about Madison Startups At Capital Entrepreneurs

Category : Entrepreneurship
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If you enjoy my Startup Reviews, entrepreneur profiles and thoughts on the Madison startup scene, don’t forget to check out my posts over at Capital Entrepreneurs.  For the last year and a half, I’ve been posting on Capital Entrepreneurs whenever a member company gets press, but over the last few weeks, a few of the CE members have decided that we’re going to use the CE blog as the TechCrunch of Madison and potentially all of Wisconsin.  We’re writing more in depth posts and are interviewing more people, startups and entrepreneurs and are even breaking some news that you might not see covered in the local media outlets.

I don’t think I’ll be cross posting much, but I think if you’re interested in hearing about Madison tech, you should check out my stories on Capital Entrepreneurs.  I posted last week about GoBuzz, a business intelligence email service that two CE members launched last week and yesterday I wrote about Chris Meyer’s grand opening of Sector 67, Madison’s first hackerspace. Check out CE and if you have any tips or stories that you think should be told, shoot me an email and I’ll make sure to do