Paul Wallbank | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Tuxedos and cocktail dresses — the real cost of being an entrepreneur

Correcting the myths about startups is the mission of venture capital investor Mark Suster

venture capital investor and blogger Mark Suster said at the Dreamforce 2013 conference yesterday.

Suster’s mission is based upon having seen the process of building business up close having been involved in two successful startups and trade sales before joining Salesforce as head of product development then branching out to the investor side of the business.

There’s also a personal reason for Suster wanting to tell the truth about starting your own venture, “the reason I’m on a personal mission to explain this is because a friend committed suicide.”

“His company had raised four million dollars but, by his standards, it wasn’t succeeding.”

Suster’s story resonates with anyone who has founded a business — it’s not something everyone is suited to and it’s a tough, demanding lifestyle.

Tuxedos and cocktail dresses

Part of the problem is public perceptions, Suster describes a conflict between “public persona and cognitive dissonance”; while an individual startup is struggling with their own flaws and failings, it appears that everyone else is doing well from their carefully crafted and placed publicity stories.

“Everyone else’s PR is their tuxedos and cocktail dresses,” Suster points out. “You on the other hand are seeing yourself naked in the mirror every morning.”

On being a marriage councilor

It’s often said that a business partnership is like a marriage and Suster finds much of his work as a venture capital investor involves counseling founders over their relationship.

“Sometimes one has to go,” Suster says. “It doesn’t matter what your preference is — and we all have our favourites — but the business cannot survive with the two of them.”

When two founders split, there is also the problem of equity, should both have equal shares then it becomes difficult to split the business; “should one partner leaves, it’s often easier to shut down the company and start again.”

Buy in your skills

A similar problem happens when there’s more than one partner and Suster cautions it’s better to employ people with the skills you need rather than offer equity in a new business.

“Having too many founders is the greatest dilution you’ll ever face,” Suster warns and his advice is to hire the skills required by the business rather than give away equity in your business.

Another benefit of hiring people is having a good team on the payroll is the validation good investors are looking for. “Having a good team proves you’re able to hire good people which is the most important skill an entrepreneur needs,” Suster explains.

Ultimately, Mark Suster sees the journey of building a business as a decade long process, the billion dollar startups are the exception rather than the rule.

The biggest advice Suster has is to understand your goals, “if you don’t define what success is, you’ll never achieve it.”

Building a business is tough, and not everybody is suited to doing it. Mark Suster’s advice isn’t just appropriate for technology startups, it’s also valid for anyone starting any type of business.

The end of HTML 5?

Does Salesforce’s move to native smartphone apps mean the end of mobile application standards?

One of the big debates in web design since the rise of smartphone apps has been the question of ‘going native’ or following web standards.

In an ideal world, all apps would follow the HTML web standards so designers would only have to create one app that would run on any device — a smartphone, tablet or PC — regardless of what type of software it was running.

However the HTML 5 standard has proved problematic as developers have found applications written in the language are slow with limited features, so the attraction of writing ‘native’ apps that are designed for each system remains strong as users get a faster, better experience.

The problem with that approach is that it results in having to design for different operating systems and various devices which is costly and adds complexity.

For the last two years at Dreamforce, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has trumpeted the advantages of the company’s HTML5 Touch product.

This year Benioff unveiled the company’s Salesforce One product — a suite of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) that simplifies building smartphone and web apps. At the media conference after the launch, Benioff even went as far to describe the once lauded Touch product as a “mistake”.

So Salesforce has abandoned HTML5, which is a blow for standard applications.

If others follow Salesforce, and it appears that is the trend, then we’ll increasingly see the smartphone industry dominated by iOS and Android as most companies lack the resources or commitment to develop for more than two platforms and their form factors.

Open standards have been one of the driving factors of the web’s success, it would be a shame if we saw the mobile market split into two warring camps reminiscent of the VHS and Beta video tape days.

Have we over-consumerised IT?

One of the phenomenons of the modern technology industry is the ‘consumerisation of IT’, but have we taken that trend too far?

I’ve spent today at the opening of the 2013 Dreamforce conference in San Francisco talking to various people about where the IT industry is going.

The dominant thing at this year’s conference is the “internet of things” or, as Salesforce are marketing it, “the internet of customers.”

What’s notable in this view is the marketing and consumer centric view of the IT world, something not surprising given Salesforce’s roots as a sales and marketing service, despite last year showing off the social media connected jet engine at last year’s conference.

Salesforce aren’t alone in this view, most conversations about the tech industry revolve around marketing and advertising. Last week’s Telstra’s Digital Summit was notable for focusing almost exclusively on brands and social media while missing the point that digital business is far more than just adopting online marketing channels.

For most industries, the marketing and direct consumer connection is only a small part of how technology, not least the internet of machines, is transforming business with manufacturing and supply chain management two areas that are being totally changed with high stakes and big money involved.

Cracking the enterprise market is hard, which is why most startup tech businesses focus on the customer market and the relatively easy, albeit cash poor, advertising and premium revenue streams.

While the focus is often on the consumer and mass-market side of the web and internet of machines, the real money, and change is in the business sector. This is exactly how most of today’s tech giants — Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Salesforce to name a few — came to be where they are today.

There’s no doubt the consumerisation of IT was a real phenomenon, but it may be that it’s currently being overplayed. We need to think beyond marketing when considering how technology is changing our businesses.

The ghost in the internet of machines

What happens when your internet connected egg tray gets a virus?

A funny thing happened two hours out of Auckland, the cabin crew on the Air New Zealand flight to San Francisco announced the inflight entertainment system had to be rebooted.

In the thirty minutes it took for the system to reset and reload, various in-seat functions such as the cabin call button and light switch froze, it was a basic example of how complex systems interact with each other.

The benefits of a connected egg tray involve the device telling us when more eggs are needed, but what happens when the thing tries to tell your online shopping service that you need 200 dozen?

As the internet of things develops and business systems become more automated, complexity is going to become greater and more subtle. Understanding and managing the risks that extend from that is going to be essential for both public safety and the economy.

“The Internet of Things creates a whole new range of attack surfaces” Cisco Systems’ Enterprise Group Vice President Rod Soderbery told the Internet of Things conference in Barcelona last month.

One of those many ‘attack surfaces’ identified by Fraser Howard, Principle Researcher of Sophos Labs are the dozens of household devices from smart TVs to internet connected egg holders that are beginning to appear in homes.

Almost all these devices will have flaws in their firmware and yet almost no vendor has an interest in maintaining or patching the firmware of this equipment.

“Consumers have no way of managing this problem” says Fraser as it’s almost impossible for householders to upgrade their systems and consumer electronics manufacturers have a poor track security track record.

“There’s a long history of companies with mass market items which deal with things like important items like credentials where they have not had a single thought about security,” says Fraser.

Security is one the many challenges facing the internet of things along with to manage rogue devices in grid networks. There’s a lot of work to be done in ensuring systems aren’t disrupted by an outlier sensor or critical information disclosed by a poorly secured or out of date smart device.

As connected egg trays start talking to the supermarket, we have to be confident that we aren’t going to come home to find our connected device hasn’t delivered a pallet load of fresh eggs or that it hasn’t given away our banking details to an organised crime ring.

A soonologist’s view of the future

BT Futurologist Nicola Millard on being a futurologist and the future of the workplace, the open plan office and customer service.

“I think my job title is a little bit misleading,” says Nicola Millard of her role as BT’s Customer Service Futurologist. “Most people would imagine futurologists have a crystal ball that works and maybe talking about twenty to twenty five years out about a future where intelligent robots have taken over the world.”

“My horizon tends to be a bit shorter,” Nicola explains. “My time tends to start in about three weeks time and tends to extend to five years, so I’m more of an industrial futurologist and CEOs tend not think beyond the next three weeks.” “I guess more of a ‘soonologist’ than a futurologist.”

Nicola was talking to the Decoding The New Economy YouTube channel at BT’s London Demonstration centre where the time frame is somewhat more than the next three weeks as the company shows off the technology and product lines it believes are going to change the communication industry.

For BT and Nicola, much of the near future is focused in how consumer and workplace behaviour is being changed by IT and communications technology.

Nicola sees an interesting relationship between technology and people – technology can radically change peoples’ behaviour but it also can amplify existing behaviours. “It can certainly influence the way we work, rest and play, in the ways we approach the office and how we consume,” says Nicola.

“Behaviour changes are really fascinating when we give people people access to technologies that give them more choice and more information than ever before. It untethers us. All of these thing present opportunities to change that way we do stuff.”

The untethered office

Technology has also untethered the office, says Nicola. “In the old days we had to go to the office at nine o’clock in the morning and leave at five in the afternoon. We didn’t have any other options – we had a desk, we had big technology and we had masses of paper.”

“That’s all changed.” Workplaces have always struggled with collaboration and Nicola sees the open plan office as being a 1970s attempt to get workers to talk and work with each other rather than hiding behind closed doors. “By forcing people into open plan we hoped that by breathing the same air they would start to collaborate.”

“Now we collaborate with people that aren’t necessarily in the same place as us. The office itself has become a collaboration tool,” Nicola says. “We’re seeing the evolution of the office.”

Today’s technology tools and remote working have changed the role of the workplace with the office becoming a place for workers to collaborate and work together, however that nature of work has changed.

Working beyond the office

With improved connectivity the home office and mobile workers have come into their own with BT having around ten percent of their workforce operating from their residences and the company finds they achieve around a twenty percent improvement in productivity from those staff.

However home working isn’t for everyone. “I’m a terrible home worker,” Nicola says. “I tend to go mad so if I want to collaborate I go to the office but I want to work quietly I go to the coffice’, which is generally a third place outside the office or home.”

“There’s only four things I need to work; good coffee, good cake – these first two are non-negotiable – good connectivity and then I need company. Not necessary office type company but just a buzz.“

The change to retailing

Today’s buzz extends to shopping, the shops are fuller on a Saturday afternoon than they have ever been before. The showrooming phenomenon – where customers use their smartphones to check prices and proudcts while in the shop – allows retailers to enhance their sales strategy as the same available to shoppers can also be used by sales assistants.

“Shopping is sometimes a contact sport,” Nicola observes. “the fact we are comparing and contrasting, the fact we are challenging the physical shop. Waving our mobile phone on the shopfloor.” “Retailers for a long time resisted showrooming, they split their online and physical spaces. We’re now seeing those physical lines blurring.”

Emerging trends

Nicola sees the biggest challenge facing business in the near future being agility – as cloud services expand, it’s easier for companies to scale which places pressure on many incumbent businesses.

Big Data also presents opportunities, “there’s always been big data, we’ve always had too much data, the analytics tools have changed.” For great challenge though for business is change and this is what will focus executive attention in the near future. “Businesses tend to be built to last rather than for change.”

Greetings from the scammers

While the online scams evolve, the venal stupidity of victims doesn’t

The notorious “419 scams” have been around since the early days of the consumer internet.

419 scams are the elaborate internet frauds that try to convince people they unexpectedly come into money. Once a gullible victim takes the bait, they are duped into paying a range of ‘facilitation fees’ and costs that drains their saving.

The term 419 scam comes from the Nigerian criminal code that covers this crime, which was appropriate as most — although not all — of these emails originated from the country.

For a while in the early 2000s, internet users became used to receiving a few 419 scam emails every day but by the middle of the decade they largely dried up as the even the most gullible and greedy idiots became wise to the schemes.

That’s not to say they have completely vanished, this morning quite a distasteful one landed in my inbox.

Greetings,
I wish to seek your assistance to execute a business deal. I am Paul Williams a Contract Agent based in London. I require your consent to present you as next of kin to a client of mine, who died along with his wife and Two kids in the Asian Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines leaving behind a large sum of money without a next of kin. With your co-operation and information available to me you can make a claim on the funds as the next of kin to my deceased client. After release of the funds to you by the financial institution where it is lodged, we can share according to a percentage we agree upon. If you may be of assistance, please reply for further co-operation.
Best Regards,

Paul Williams.

It’s unlikely that Paul Williams exists and even if he did it’s unlikely he’d have anything to do with this unsavory scam that most people would immediate bin when they receive it.

Binning the message was my reaction as well, but as I was about to, it occurred to me that there are enough venal, stupid people in the world who would agree to be involved in such a deal.

No doubt if you asked them they’d say defrauding the deceased family’s estate is a victimless crime as the money would only end up with the government anyway, these people would swear blind they are honest, honourable folk and no doubt they would think they are rather clever.

It’s worth reflecting that dishonest, venal and somewhat dim people do occasionally get their come-uppance in today’s world.

Will the internet’s insecurities damage economic growth?

Online security problems are chronic and costing our economies billions claim researchers.

“No country is cyber-ready” warns Melissa Hathaway, author the Cyber-Readiness Report.

Hathaway’s warning is that the economic benefits of the internet are being lost to the various vulnerabilities in our information infrastructure.

Dutch research company TNO claims that the Netherlands lost up to 2% of their GDP to cybercrime in 2010 and Hathaway claims similar losses are being incurred in other developed countries.

Supporting Hathaway’s views at a function in Sydney today, Cisco System’s Senior Vice President and Chief Security Officer, John Stewart, made a frightening observation about corporate networks.

“Every single customer we have checked with, and these are the Fortune 2000, has high threat malware operating in their environment – every single one of them.”

So the bad guys are in our networks and causing real economic damage. The question for businesses and governments is how do we manage this threat and mitigate any losses?

On our more intimate level, how do we manage our own systems and online behaviour to limit our personal or business losses?

Hathaway makes the point that the internet was never intended to do the job we now expect it to do and as consequence security was never built into the net’s design.

Today, we rely upon the internet regardless of its lack of inbuilt security. With everyone from governments through to organised crime and petty scammers wanting to peek at our data, we have to start taking security far more seriously.

The Digital Fallacy

Businesses don’t need a Chief Digital Officer, it’s one of many fallacies about the digital economy

Earlier this week Telstra held their 2013 Digital Summit in Melbourne, a curious event featuring a bunch of US based experts to tell the locals what they should have already known about the changing business landscape.

The reversion of Australian business to a 1950s colonial cringe is worth a blog post in itself, however more interesting was the assertion that every organisation should appoint a Chief Digital Officer.

A Chief Digital Officer is an idea based on the flawed fallacy that digital technologies are unique and separate from other business functions.

The Chief Electricity Officer

Digital is simply the way business is done these days and has been since the electronic calculator appeared in the 1970s – having a Chief Digital Officer is akin to appointing a Chief Electricity Officer.

The role of a Chief Digital Officer is an idea usually pushed by social media experts and other fringe digerati that perversely undermines the very roles they are trying to promote.

By putting “digital” into its own organisational silo, the proponents of a Chief Digital Officer are actually advocating marginalising their own fields. It’s also counterproductive for a business that follows this advice.

The real challenge for those pushing digital technologies is putting the business case for their particular field and in most cases, such as social media or cloud computing, the argument for adopting them is usually compelling in some part of every organisation, but it shouldn’t be overplayed.

More than just marketing

An aspect heavily overplayed in the commentary around the Telstra Digital Summit was the role of social media with most people focusing on branding and marketing.

If you believe this is the extant of ‘digital business’, then you’re in for a nasty shock as supply chains become increasingly automated, Big Data makes companies smarter and the internet of machines accelerates the business cycle even more. Social media is only a small part of the ‘digital business’ story.

Over-stating the role of individual technologies is something that’s common when people have books or seminars to spruik – which, funny enough, is exactly what Telstra’s international speakers were doing.

It’s understandable that an author or speaker will overstate the benefits of their project, but it doesn’t mean that you should fall for the fallacies in their arguments.

ABC Nightlife Computers – explaining the internet of things

For the November 2013 Nightlife, we look at the Internet of things and smart cities

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy to discuss how technology affects your business and life. For the November 2013 Nightlife spot we’ll be looking at the internet of everything.

If you missed the show, you can listen to the recording at the Nightlife website.

The internet of everything is the next big thing in the tech industry, but what how is it any different from the web we know today that’s given us cute pictures of cats, Twitter and the end of newspapers? Some of the questions we’ll cover include;

what exactly is the internet of things?
how is it different from today’s internet?
is this just another tech industry slogan like big data or social media?
things like aircraft have been connected to the net for years, why is this suddenly news?
what sort of machines are we talking about connecting?
some industry pundits are saying this business could be worth $14 trillion dollars, where do they get this number from?
how are governments looking at using these technologies?
During the week it was reported Google have patented a tattoo with an embedded microphone.
so what happens when viruses get into our wearable technologies and connected fridge?

Part of the show will cover the geek’s tour of Barcelona and the interview with Antoni Vires, Deputy Mayor of the city on how the Spanish industrial centre sees it’s role as a connected city.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

Malware writing becomes bigtime crime.

The online bad guys are now professionals and we have to start taking them very seriously

“Fifteen years ago we saw a thousand types a malware a month, now we see a three thousand a day,” states Richard Cohen, Threat Operations Manager of Sophos Lab during a tour of the company’s head office outside Oxford in England last week.

That one statistic alone describes the scale of online security risks facing every computer user. Making matters worse is that the attackers have moved from enthusiastic amateurs to committed professionals.

A particularly notable change for home and small businesses has been the risk of ‘ransomware’ where a computer’s data is held hostage by the bad guys until an unlock code is paid for.

Like many things in the computer world, ransomware isn’t new however the latest breed uses the latest cryptographic tools.

“Now there’s money involved, there’s serious effort,” says Sophos Labs’ Vice President Simon Reed. “The quality of malware has gone up.”

The early versions of ransomware were a joke, usually just being a scary opening screen warning people of the FBI or a similar agency had detected illegal downloads on their computer. Today – according to Sophos’ researchers – the new breed of malware features high level encryption that locks away data fairly comprehensively.

While the researchers at Sophos were briefing me on the online risks they see, on the other side of the world Eugene Kasperski, founder of Russia’s most successful computer security company, was addressing an Australian National Press Club lunch on the state of the anti-virus market.

“Traditional criminals are stupid,” Kasperski told the lunch. “Computer criminals are different. They are geeks; geeks with broken minds.”

The message to homes and small business from both Kasperski and Sophos is quite clear – you have to take online security seriously. Start doing so now.

Building a protocol for smart cities

Can cities standardise the way they connect to the internet of things?

One of the challenges for governments with smart city technologies is that most administrations don’t know the questions to ask about them, the City Protocol initiative aims to address this problem.

During the recent Internet of Things conference in Barcelona, Barcelona Deputy Mayor Antoni Vives discussed the objectives of the City Protocol Initiative.

“The solutions for our problems are more or less the same,” Vives says. “The problems cities have is they are too weak to talk to big corporations to ask for the solutions we need.”

“So the idea is to set up standard solutions in the way the internet protocol did through agreements between cities around the world and then through these agreements we set up standards that can be developed anywhere around the world in a very cheap way in a physical way that can improve people’s lives.”

The cities protocol already has fifty cities signed up to the protocol and partnerships with corporations ranging from Cisco to Schneider and Microsoft along with universities such as the MIT, the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago

Barcelona’s city government was instrumental in setting up the protocol following a visit to Cisco’s head office in 2012.

“We went to San Francisco and we explained to these guys, ‘we have a plan for our city, why don’t you join us?’ Provided that we convert this plan for Barcelona into something applicable and scalable for any city in the world.”

“What you have in Barcelona is something we want to scale and replicate anywhere in the world,” Vires proudly states. “The technology you see in Barcelona is something you’re going to see in ten years time in Addis Ababa, Quito, Johannesburg or Moscow. That’s the real revolution.”

Vires sees the smart city technologies changing the way councils and governments work with citizens, “we have discovered that rather than going from the administration to the citizens, going from the citizens to the people improves our own models. We never forget these guys are the people who pay our wages.”

“If you put a device in the city that can talk to them, then people are going to interact with the city in a way they have never done.”

As well as seeing it changing the way governments communicate with people, Vires is enthusiastic about what technology can do for his council delivering services to residents

“I have to have the best tools in my hands to deliver a better quality of life for my people.”

There are some risks though with the smart city technologies, particularly that of inclusion with less advantaged, immigrant or older age groups. Vires tells a story to illustrate how this is a priority for the city.

“We installed the smart bus stop,” says Vires. “There was an old woman and this bus stop has slots to charge mobiles and that old woman went to the slot, took a penny from her pocket and tried to put the penny into the slot as she thought she had to put a coin into the slot to make it work.”

“We have to make sure that that old woman understands that device is there to serve her, not to put coins into but to give her a better service.”

The old lady’s story illustrates the challenge facing all governments in implementing new technologies in making sure that everyone has access to the new services. Addressing the problem of equal access will probably be one of the greatest tasks facing the Cities Protocol team.

Into the ruins of Bedlam – visiting the industrial revolution’s birthplace

A quick tour of the Industrial Revolution’s birthplace.

Nestled in a quiet wooded valley near the modern town of Telford in the English Midlands is the birthplace of the industrial revolution.

Today the three quiet villages — Coalbrookdale, Coalport and Ironbridge are quaint little communities but two hundred years ago they were the powerhouse of the Industrial revolution.

ironbridge-wooded-valley — The hills around Ironbridge

Coal and ironstone mining in the district started in medieval times with the locals having a wide range of words to describe different types of coal — Lancashire Ladies, Randle and Clod being just a few terms.

Iron had been smelted at Coalbrookdale from the late 16th Century however the arrival of potmaker Abraham Darby in 1709 that catalysed the industry with his method to reliably use coke for the blast furnaces.

coalbrookdale-by-night — Coalbrookdale by night – the Bedlam furnaces at their peak

Further downstream, the Madeley Wood smelter became infamous as the bedlam furnaces, named after the noise and confusion of London’s notorious asylum.

With the new reliable way to smelt iron and a string of blast furnaces along the valley, production skyrocketed and the valley’s natural advantages of accessible coal, iron and water meant it became the centre of the industrial revolution.

Increased production meant more workers and people flocked in from the surrounding agricultural communities — not in a dissimilar way to today’s experience in China.

That increased population meant more slums, what is today’s cute village was once sqaulid poverty, albeit an improvement on the life of an agricultural worker. Epidemics were common with 32,000 lives lost in cholera in 1831-2.

Despite the squalor of the workers’ quarters, the ironmasters were proud men and Coalbrookdale’s new bridge could only be build of one material — iron.

ironbridge-cast-iron-coalbrookdale — “This Bridge was cast at Coalbrookdale”

Ironmasters like John Wilkinson and Abraham Derby III were also ferocious promotors of their product and the bridge stands as a proud, strong advert for the strength of Coalbrookdale’s iron. Wilkinson himself built the first cast iron barge a few years later and was eventually buried in a cast iron coffin.

boy-and-black-swan — Boy and Black Swan cast iron statue

Eventually though the smelters of Coalbrookdale began to lose their competitive edge as mining and blast furnace technology improved, the ironmasters responded with moving into decorative and intricate cast iron features like the Boy and Swan statue that now graces the gardens of the Coalbrookdale Iron Museum.

ruins-of-bedlam-at-ironbridge — The ruins of the bedlam blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale

Despite their successes, Coalbrookdale’s slide continued, with coal production peaking in 1871 and a steady decline over the following century.

Today, there’s not a lot of industry in Coalbrookdale except for one plant that keeps the area’s engineering tradition running.

For Britain, the question is how the nation’s economy continues it’s engineering traditions, 45 minutes drive away is a relic of Twentieth Century industry — the Austin motor works at Longbridge.

Today an assembly plant fills a small corner of the formerly sprawling factory site and over it flies the flag of it’s new owners. The People’s Republic of China.

We live in interesting times.