June Book Reviews

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I took the last few days to catch up on some reading.  I read Another Hill to Climb, by Bo Ryan, Wisconsin’s successful basketball coach, Rome 1960 by David Maraniss, about the 1960 Olympics and how they changed the world and In Defense of Food, a critique of the Western Diet, by Michael Pollan.

Another Hill to Climb is the story of how Bo Ryan became a successful Big Ten basketball coach.  Its not particularly well written, but its an interesting, quick read nonetheless.  Ryan is an interesting character in the college basketball world because he comes from a very humble background and still is quite humble today.  He is willing to speak his mind when he thinks that something is unfair and has lots of funny stories about growing up in Chester, PA and moving up through the coaching ranks.   He shows the amount of dedication necessary to be successful in college coaching and believes that his lessons can be used in other professions.  I think he is right.  If you are a basketball fan, check out this book.

Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World is David Maraniss’ newest book and is just as interesting as his previous works.  He tells the story of the 1960 Olympics, set against the backdrop of the cold war, the civil rights movement and weaves individual stories about athletes, organizers and politicians.  1960 was the first televised Olympics and the last olympics where athletes were supposed to be completely nonprofessionals.  The 1960 Olympics had the world’s first doping scandal and the first sub sarahan-African to win  a gold medal.  I never thought a history book could be a page turner until I read Maraniss’ They Walked Into Sunlight, but his books are.  I found myself reading an extra chapter when I was about to go to bed because I wanted to know who won the 1960 100m gold medal.  If you enjoy history, check out this book.  If you have never read any of Maraniss, check out They Walked into Sunlight, Clemente or his Vince Lombardi biography.  I highly recommend any of them.

Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food is the following to his first book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which narrowly missed out on being one of my favorite books of 2008.  In Defense of Food is interesting because Pollan attacks the idea that we can eat food based on nutrition, instead of being just food.  He traces the origin of the Western Diet, high in dairy, meat and refined carbohydrates, and why it is bad for you.  Its amazing that an apple today has 33% the nutrients that an apple did in 1950.  There are plenty of other examples in the book.

He also talks about how we got to where we are and how we can fix our diet moving forward.  Its not a dull as it seems, as Pollan is a journalist by trade and includes lots of amusing anecdotes in his writing.  If you enjoy food or want to learn more about why Americans’ diet, check this book out.

Enron Documentary is Incredibly Interesting

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I just watched The Smartest Guys in the Room, a documentary about the rise and fall of Enron.  I have a special interest in Enron, as I margined my entire stock portfolio and shorted it in my 10th grade mock stock competition for a few days, but relented to my partners advice that it couldn’t fall any more and went long Enron, only to finish dead last.  If we would have stayed with the original trade, we would have had a free trip to New York!  But enough of that.

The documentary has interviews with the journalist who first started to question Enron’s meteoric rise, former employees and executives and plenty of video from the companies many meetings and pep talks.  It is really well done and very interesting, notching an Academy Award Nomination in 2006.  If you are at all interested in the Enron story, or corporate fraud in general, check out this documentary.

The most interesting part of the documentary centered on Enron’s role in the blackouts that plagued California in winter 2001 and summer 2002.  I was always skeptical about claims of meddling and corporate scandal in the blackouts, but the documentary painted a very explicit case that showed overt meddling that caused up to $30b of losses in the California economy, the recall and end to the political career of Gray Davis and ultimately the election of The Governator to California’s highest office.

The documentary showed audio of Enron traders telling power plants to shut down, which caused rolling blackouts.  The traders also were taped diverting power from California power plants to other areas to try to drive up the price.  It worked.  Power was $40 per unit before they started their shenanigans and spiked to $1000 per unit at their peak and Enron made billions.  This part of the business was pretty much the only successful part, but was clearly unethical, if not illegal.

The rolling blackouts caused huge economic damage to California’s economy, ended a political career, caused traffic accidents and many other consequences so that Enron could make money.  Add this business practice to their cooking the books, it was pretty clear that Enron was very corrupt.  It was also interesting to see how complicit investment banks, ratings agencies, the Bush Administration, accountants and journalists were in allowing Enron to get away with fraud for so long.

There are many parallels to the current financial crisis in that so many people were blinded by greed, derelicting their moral and fiduciary duties.  They turned a blind eye to poor business practices and extreme risk taking.  Its interesting to see history repeat itself so quickly.  Check out the documentary.  Its playing for free on Mark Cuban’s HDnet channel for the next few weeks.

Startup Review: GeoBuzz

Category : Entrepreneurship
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Yesterday, I reviewed Alice.com, a Madison-based startup that launched earlier this week.  Today, I’m looking at GeoBuzz, a new product by the Madison-based startup PerBlue.  PerBlue was founded by a few UW students last year and already have had some good success with its mobile device, location based MMORPG Parallel Kingdom.

GeoBuzz is a really cool idea.  It allows you to post Buzzes, or messages similar to tweets on Twitter, to its platform that is visible t the people with the GeoBuzz application the area around you.  From their website:

GeoBuzz is a location-based, cross platform chat application that puts you in touch with the people around your geographic location. You can share thoughts on speakers or performances at live events, post restaurant specials, or get people together to meet.

All of what you see is narrowed down from people in your area. GeoBuzz brings back the idea of community and will help you connect with people that are literally around you. It is available on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, and Windows Mobile phones.

Forrest Woolworth, head of the GeoBuzz project, says that the goal is to bring people together in their own community.  “The internet has allowed people to connect instantly with others all around the globe, but it has pretty much ignored local connections.  GeoBuzz aims to change that and connect people, via social media, to others in their own community.”  You can follow their trials and tribulations on their blog, here.

GeoBuzz is especially innovative because it is cross-platform, meaning that the GeoBuzz application can be used across multiple mobile devices.  It brings together the fragmented mobile device market and allows all of these people to connect, regardless of their mobile device.  Its similar to Twitter, but location based and is divided into multiple channels where people can organize events, check out bar atmospheres before going and “live buzz” local event.  Its a really cool idea, and will be interesting to see how they promote it and expand to more users, as there is huge room for innovation with their platform.

I was also struck by how GeoBuzz could be used in the recent Iranian protests after the elections.  I wrote about the role of social media and the new media’s response to the unrest compared to the traditional media in previous posts and was thinking about how GeoBuzz or a service like it, could have been used to organize protests, disseminate information and show safe and unsafe areas.  The protestors could have buzzed about friendly locations, where riot police and basij were most angry and allowed people another outlet to connect.  Most likely, the regime would have tried to block a service like GeoBuzz from the start, but it would have been interesting to see.  As GeoBuzz and others catch on, and I believe they will, it will be interesting to see what they are used for.   I think it can be used like Twitter, but for more real time, location based information that can turn into action more quickly.

What do you think?  Would you use GeoBuzz?  What would you Buzz about and what situations would GeoBuzz be most useful to you?

Startup Review: Alice.com

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On Monday, Alice.com was released to the outside word.  The Madison based startup, founded by the already successful Mark McGuire and Brian Wiegand, allows consumers to buy non-perishible consumer goods online and have them delivered directly to their door and never pay shipping.  The site sends reminders when it thinks you might be running low on different products so that you don’t run out.  From their blog:

Brian and I left Microsoft just over a year ago after they acquired our last start-up Jellyfish.com (news here). At the time, we set out to answer one question: “Why doesn’t anyone buy toilet paper online?” It sounds kind of silly—it did to me anyway—but that question was a metaphor for the larger challenge we wanted to tackle. Namely, could we figure out a way to get the mainstream consumer to buy Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)—non-perishable stuff like toilet paper, toothpaste, laundry detergent, and diapers—on the Internet?

Despite the enormous size of this market, the vast majority of people still don’t use the convenience and power of the Internet for this category. In fact, consumers buy items like clothing and shoes—that need to be tried on and often returned—more than they do these simple CPG goods that are bought repeatedly in chore-like fashion.

I attended a talk that Mark gave at the UW Business School back in December about his experiences starting businesses and his current work with Alice and have been following their blog ever since.  After their launch on Monday, I decided to try it out.

At first glance, I really liked the graphics and layout.  They are inviting, playful and fun, without overwhelming you with too much going on to distract you from the core use of the site.  The text has the same inviting, playful feel.  For example, Alice’s phone number is 877-Yo Alice and includes text like “start your free account” and “never run out of toilet paper,” instead of something boring.

Once I registered, I started inputting the products that I use around the house.   You can either find for products by typing them into the search box or selecting “my products” which gives you a “fish” for each type of household product you might use.  You can click on each fish to find a product, shop via search or shop by room in your house.  I did most of my shopping by clicking on “fish” (stand ins for each product until you select a one) and loved the inviting text of “lets go find some” to get to the products.  I also really liked the scrolling coupons on the bottom of the site that offer deals on different products.  At one point, I left my computer to come back later and had to sign in again.  On some sites, its bothersome, but on Alice, there was a funny graphic of a policeman telling me I needed to log in again.  I was fairly easy to sign up, select products and place an order and I really like the overall idea.

While I really like the site overall, the process of inputting all of my products took a pretty long time.  It would be cool to see Alice preselect branded products for each product type I am interested in.   In my case, brands don’t matter for products like soap, toilet paper, napkins, paper towels etc, as long as they get the job done.  It would not only save customers time and energy, but it would allow Alice to possible make more money by pushing customers toward certain products.

Alice asks you how often you think you will run out of each product, so that it can remind you to reorder.  I really have no idea how often I run out of most things, so it would also be nice to see examples of how often other consumers need to reorder the products that I am ordering.  A cool graph of x% reorder in 2 weeks, x% reorder in 4 weeks and so on.

The biggest change that I would like to see is the ability to sort each product by price, after the site coupons have been applied and the ability to sort by cost per unit.  I normally shop for products in the supermarket via a cost per unit comparison, but its not readily apparent on Alice.  Its also interesting that it doesn’t seem to be advantageous to the consumer to buy in bulk.  With many consumers trained to buy in bulk, its weird to see single rolls of paper towel have a lower cost per unit than the same paper towels in bigger sizes.  I wonder if this will cause Alice to have higher shipping costs than they otherwise would, as there does not seem to be an incentive to buy in bulk.

The Good

  • Innovative, needed idea
  • Inviting, playful graphics, text and branding
  • Clean layout
  • Free shipping
  • Lots of products
  • Low Prices

Suggestions for Improvement

  • Sort by cost per unit and cost after coupon
  • Preselect brands for each product to save consumer time and possibly increase revenue
  • Create incentives for consumers to buy in bulk
  • Add a graph with information on how often others reorder

I really like the site and will try it out for a few months to see how it goes.  I hate going to the store to buy these types of items, so hopefully it will work as well as I think it will.  Check out Alice.com for yourself and let me know your thoughts.