Category: Personal Thoughts

Fixing My Relationship with Facebook

Category : Personal Thoughts
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I’ve always had a rocky relationship with social networks. I joined Facebook in Fall 2008, pulled in by the girl I liked who kept pushing me to join. It was awesome in college.  A great way to meet new people. A great way to stay in touch with my high school friends at other universities.

But as Facebook grew, I started to get uncomfortable. People started to behave differently.  They spent more time online and had less actual human contact. They used Facebook as a platform to show off their “cool” lives, political comments and inane thoughts of the day. I found myself doing it too.

I’d accumulated hundreds of “friends,” the vast majority people who I rarely talked to in real life. I started spending more time on Facebook, looking at other people’s lives who I didn’t really know! I became uncomfortable with oversharing and wasting my time.  Something had to change.

Deleting 600 Friends Didn’t Work

So in 2009, I went through my friend list of nearly 1000 and looked at each person.  I said to myself, “if I saw this person on the other side of the street, would I stop, cross over and say hi?”  If the answer was no, they got deleted. I got down to about 300, but I also hurt some feelings. I felt bad about it, but my relationship with Facebook got better. I spent less time look at other people’s curated lives, while wasting my own.

It worked for a time, but last year, I found my behavior starting to change again. I was spending more time on Facebook, doing nothing, wasting time. I found myself posting status updates and pictures only to show off, checking Facebook on my iPhone whenever I had downtime instead of actually living life. I felt a little disappointed when people didn’t retweet or like a photo or comment I uploaded. I was becoming the social media user I abhorred.

Social Networks Make Us Unhappy

On a trip to LA I realized that I was unhappy because even though I’d seen killer whales that only come to California once a year, I hadn’t gotten a good picture to show off to my friends. Something was wrong.  I deleted nearly 100 more friends and took Facebook and Twitter off of my iPhone. I later added Twitter back, but not Facebook.

I’ve gotten more disillusioned with social networks in general over the past six months. Social networks make people unhappy. If you’re like the vast majority of social network users, you post your best photos, your best updates, your funniest jokes, best articles you’ve read, vacation pictures, celebs you’ve met and show off what you’re up to.  You show a skewed portrayal of yourself. Facebook brings people down because we’re only seeing the best part of other people’s lives. And we think “if they’re living that well, why aren’t I?” And its addictive. It’s always there.

I also don’t like Facebook’s social pressure. “Like my status. Why don’t you ever post on my wall, he does, you don’t! Did you see her photo on Facebook?”  I hate Facebook messages. I get tons of them, but there’s no good way to organize them and I lose messages in the shuffle. I’ve missed meetings and cool opportunities because people contact me on Facebook when they could have written me an email or sent me a tweet. I hate getting sucked into Facebook.

Deleting Facebook?

About two months ago, I decided to completely delete Facebook. But I couldn’t do it. I administer 7 Facebook fan pages for brands. I get about 30% of my traffic to by blog from Facebook. I make money from consulting and blog referrals via Facebook. I get invited to parties and events. And it truly does help you stay in contact with people who you meet in your travels.

Next, I decided to defriend all by my 20 closest friends and use Facebook more like Twitter, but I realized that that would only help me with part of my problem. After thinking about it some more, I came up with a new solution, which I’m implementing now.

A Compromise Plan

1. Unsubscribe from all friend updates

My newsfeed is 100% blank.  I won’t waste time each day on random stuff. I’ll have less of a reason to check Facebook when I’m bored. I know I’ll miss out on the newest memes, a few interesting articles, but overall I think it’s a win. If I want to see what someone’s up to, I can still check out their profile.

2. Use Facebook more like twitter

I’m going to publish all of my posts to Facebook as public. I’ll continue to post my blog posts, interesting articles I see and anything else I’d normally tweet out.  This way, I’ll still get the traffic Facebook gives me now.

3. Use Facebook more liked Linkedin

I’ll accept nearly all Facebook friend requests and view it more as my network, rather than friends. This way, I’ll stay in better contact with more people who might be interesting to interact with in real life in the future.

4. Put most of my photos to private

I’m going to put all of my photos to private, except a few of the most interesting ones.

We’ll see how it ends up. Have any of you changed the way you interact with Facebook? What do you do?

The Longest Email Disclaimer of All Time

Category : Personal Thoughts
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I got this email today from someone I’ve done business with.  I’ve removed all identifying information, changing the real company’s name to “company.”  If you have a long email disclaimer, ask yourself, why?  And please read Seth Godin’s Email Checklist.

This e-mail is confidential.  If you are not the intended recipient, you must not disclose or use the information contained in it.  If you have received this e-mail in error, please tell us immediately by return e-mail to [email protected] and delete the document.

E-mails containing unprofessional, discourteous or offensive remarks violate Company policy. You may report employee violations by forwarding the message to [email protected].

No recipient may use the information in this e-mail in violation of any civil or criminal statute. Company disclaims all liability for any unauthorized uses of this e-mail or its contents.

This e-mail constitutes neither an offer nor an acceptance of any offer. No contract may be entered into by a Company employee without express approval from an authorized Company manager.

Warning: Computer viruses can be transmitted via e-mail. Company accepts no liability or responsibility for any damage caused by any virus transmitted with this e-mail.

Why?

I’m Joining Welcu and Moving Back to Chile

Category : Personal Thoughts
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In mid January, I knew that Entrustet was going to be acquired and I started to look around for new things to do.  I knew I didn’t want to rush into starting something right away: I’d been running startups non-stop since I was 19, with only a 6 week break between when the ink dried on the ExchangeHut acquisition and when I started Entrustet. I needed a break from the day to day pressure of running a startup.  I needed to recharge so that when I found something I really wanted to work on, I’d be ready.

I knew I wanted to move out of Wisconsin, at least for awhile. I’d lived there my entire life.  I went out to San Francisco and met with some friends and talked to my network in NYC.  Nothing really piqued my interest.  I decided to return to Santiago, where I’d spent six months as part of Startup Chile, to see what I could find.  I was looking for a specific opportunity that met four specific criteria and if I couldn’t, I’d return to the US.  I wanted to join a startup that:

  • Had traction and was generating significant revenue
  • Was expanding across Latin America so I could learn about the markets and expand my network
  • Forced me to work in Spanish all day so that I could finally get fully fluent
  • With a team of founders I could learn from

I talked to all of my contacts in Chile and looked at a bunch of different companies, but one kept hitting all of the metrics: Welcu.

I’d met Nico Orellana and Seba Gamboa in my first few weeks in Chile in 2010 at an asado (bbq).  The two Chilean entrepreneurs were on their way to Palo Alto to try to raise money for their event management company.  We ran into each other in person and on Twitter over the next year and a half and I always admired their progress.  They arrived in Silicon Valley with a simple product and returned to Chile as 500 Startups alums, bosting funding from Eric Schmidt’s (ex-CEO Google) Tomorrow Ventures, the founders of Groupon LatAM and other Groupon execs in South America.

When I got back to Chile, I met with Nico over a michelada and he told me about Welcu’s agressive expansion plans to Colombia, Argentina and Brazil.  In addition to Welcu, Nico and team organize Webprendedor, Latin America’s most important technology and entrepreneurship conference.  Nico told me they needed help with marketing, pr, blogging social media and expansion strategy and offered me a sort of Entrepreneur in Residence position and head of marketing for Latin America.

It met all of my goals:  Welcu is generating significant revenue and expanding quickly.  I’d work in spanish all day, be learning about the Chilean, Argentine, Colombian and Brazilian markets and be learning from two great cofounders, along with an awesome team.

I joined Welcu two months ago as employee number 7.  Now we’re 35 and have offices in Chile, Argentina, Colombia and are opening Brazil as we speak.  We’re hiring as fast as we can.  I work in spanish all day and provide lots of entertainment for my coworkers.  My spanish is already so much better and I’m learning how business gets done in the rest of South America.  Our tech team is incredible and Nico is a great entrepreneur who has many of the traits of my business partners from previous successful startups.  We have a great team and it’s going to be fun as we continue to expand across South America.  For me, this is the perfect opportunity.  The only downside: my first winter in two years.

Losing our Civil Liberties

Category : Personal Thoughts, Political Science & Economics
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Much of the world used to look at the US as a bastion of freedom, free speech, personal expression, the famed “city upon a hill” that the first colonists dreamed to create as they escaped across the Atlantic to try to freely practice their religion.  But over the past 10 years, things have changed.

For example, two young British citizens were not allowed into the US after tweeting “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America” and “3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA pissing people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!”  When they got off the plane, they were arrested and questioned for 5 hours.  They explained that “destroy America” means that they were going to party hard and that the digging up Ms. Monroe was from a Family Guy episode, but the police didn’t buy it.  Instead, they were thrown into a holding cell with drug dealers for 12 hours, then shipped back to the UK.

We’re patting down 6 year olds in the airport and forcing old people and young kids to take off their diapers because there’s a chance there’s a bomb in there.  When pressed, the TSA said that because a 6 year old in Iraq set off a bomb, we have to check our six year olds too.  That’s just asinine.

To get on an airplane, we require people to go through body scanners that show every detail of your body to some government employee and could potentially cause cancer.  An now the TSA and Homeland Security are debuting bodyscanners in random highway locations.  It used to be that the government needed probable cause to search you, but now, they’re just scanning away without any sort of justification.

We have the “if you see something say something” campaign to try to get citizens to inform on each other.  That’s straight out of Orwell.  The government could be monitoring your social media, your private email, your search traffic for signs of a “national security threat.”  When you enter the US, immigration has the right to look at the entire contents of your computer or any notebooks you might have on you, whether you are a citizen or not.  The last time I entered the US, the agent looked at my notebook that was filled with business ideas and personal writing for about 5 minutes before he let me pass.  The time before it, the agent opened my computer and looked around for a minute or two.

And if all that wasn’t enough, President Obama signed a law that allows US citizens to be held indefinently at Guantanamo Bay without charge or due process.  This law is so clearly against the Bill of Rights.  It’s incredible how far we’ve come in 10 years.  It’s official government policy to assassinate US citizens in foreign countries who are “associating with terrorists.”

It’s clear Bin Laden is winning even in death. If he were still alive, he’d be laughing at all the changes that have been made in the name of security.  In the name of fighting terrorism, we’ve adopted servaliance that are so Orwellian and Huxlian that the authors themselves would laugh at just how correct they’ve become.  Previously, when people did horrific things in the US, we shrugged it off as an isolated crazy person and basically said “fuck off, we’re gonna keep living the same way we have been,” but we reacted differently to 9/11.  We’ve succumed to fear from government and news media.

The ability to use  common sense and discretion was already on the decline in US society before 9/11, but since then, the decline has sped up incredibly.  The slope was a bit slippery before 9/11, but now its completly iced over and we’re quickly falling down the mountain.  I don’t like it one bit.