Use your cleaver
"What you will be is a guy who knows how to use a cleaver, and when you stop knowing how to use it, all those things you have acquired will be held up by nothing, and will collapse into the nothing you have become."
are you prepared to be?
Hey I'm Matt. I started Slicehost. I like business, geekery and gambling.
work: www.slicehost.com
muse: www.howradical.com
tweet: www.twitter.com/zenmatt
mail: matt at howradical dot com
Live or Stay-at-home?
Bill Simmons on why going to sporting events sucks. The leagues need to rethink the stadium experience, it's similar to the problem with movie theaters - staying at home tromps going out. I'd rather attend 1 or 2 games a year, pay more and get *really* good seats or a super high end experience (luxury box). The NFL is especially vulnerable because it's probably the worst live experience around due to the reasons cited below. I would love a couch/lazyboy section with more room, wireless access, plugs for laptops, waitresses, TVs, etc - but down in the stadium seats or an open air box. I'd do that with my buddies once a year in a heartbeat. Of course if you have a good team, it's much easier to get excited about going to the game (cough not the Rams cough). I definitely want to see a Cowboys game this year (my team when STL lost the Cardinals), Jerry Jones understands this problem and is trying to solve it by creating a circus like atmosphere wrapped in a billion dollar stadium.
"Prediction VI: Blackouts of home games will become the signature media story of the 2009 season. You'll hear way too much about it. Here's my take: This isn't about the economy. It's about the fact that it's more fun to stay home and watch football than it is to sit in crappy seats to watch any team ranging from "lousy" to "mediocre." It just is. For many fan bases, here are the two choices every Sunday:
Door No. 1 (more expensive): Traffic, parking, long walk to stadium, lousy seats, lifeless state-of-the-art arena, TV timeouts, dead crowds, drunk/bitter fans, more TV timeouts, hiked-up concession prices, PDAs with jammed signals as you're searching for scores, even more TV timeouts, long walk to car, even more traffic.
Door No. 2 (less expensive): Sofa, NFL package, HD, fantasy scores online, remote control toggling, gambling, access to scores, seven straight hours of football, cell phone calls, beer and food in fridge, no traffic.
I can see going through Door No. 1 once a year just to remind yourself that going to an NFL game sucks. But eight times a year? Unless you had good seats, or unless this was your only excuse to get out of your house and get plastered, why would you? It's a blue-collar sport with white-collar ticket prices. This blackout trend would have happened whether the economy was suffering or not."
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My Startup Exhibitionist Fetish
Just read When in Doubt, Make it Public, that linked to an old Jason Kottke piece. Both discuss the somewhat counterintuitive fact (at least for me) that making information public often turns out well for all of the parties involved. It stoked my open book startup fantasy. When I'm thinking about things, I like to imagine doing the exact opposite of my gut reaction or what most people would do. I'm a private person by nature and hold most things, especially business information, close to the vest. While building Slicehost, I developed this weird fantasy to reveal everything - right down to customer counts, overall growth and accounting details. If someone asked, we'd answer, publicly. A business exhibitionist fetish if you will. I think it started with the waitlist post. People were upset, we were at wit's end and laid everything out. The response was great. Public companies reveal their financials quarterly, but I'm envisioning something more frequent and informal. The upside would be complete transparency with customers and possible suitors, the downside would be competitors (current or potential) getting a look behind the curtain. Then again, maybe nobody would care and it would be a geeky case of TMI. The Dropsend sale comes to mind as a related example, if you know of any others let me know.
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Shred your junk
Lots of changes for me recently, including a couple of physical moves. Thanks to a packing service and some planning, it went perfectly. Until this morning when my brother called frantically, claiming that an attorney at his wife's office had found a bunch of my credit cards this weekend. I assured him that was impossible, because I don't have any credit cards and my wallet was in the gym bag slung over my shoulder. My mind started racing, the only thing I could think of was that somehow a bunch of my papers and personal items got tossed during the move. Even worse, was someone opening credit cards in my name? Sure enough my sister-in-law called back with several of my old credit cards, Discover, Amex, an Amazon Visa - most nearly 5 years old! The lady from her office found my stuff lying in the street, across town, recognized my name and gathered it up. First, what are the odds? Second, thank you and good karma to her for taking the time to pick it up. Lastly and most importantly - shred your old stuff. I went through every piece of paper in my apartment, so I must have hidden these old cards instead of destroying them. Whatever they were in, I tossed. Then someone crawled into a NASTY, smelly, wet dumpster at my old place, went through the trash and plucked these out. Disgusting, but lesson learned. It was already on my todo list - but a new shredder is on its way.
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Cessna goes medieval
I got a kick out of this Cessna ad. Namely because I was trying to estimate the number of people who come across the ad, stop to read it and are actually in a position to purchase a business jet. Then I started thinking about how it's identical to any number of chest pounding, adrenaline pumping Nike ads, except it's for... CEOs. The corporate world is brutal, Cessna will help you kick ass, take names and be all visionary and shit. All jokes aside, I stopped to read it so kudos to the marketing team. Unfortunately I cannot afford a jet.
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Allstar Vids
I have a long one of Obama throwing out the first pitch but it'll take too long to upload.
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We'll See
I liked this story and wanted to archive it, from Derek Sivers. -- A farmer had only one horse. One day, his horse ran away. All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.” A few days later, his horse came back with twenty wild horses. The man and his son corraled all 21 horses. All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “We’ll see.” One of the wild horses kicked the man’s only son, breaking both his legs. All the neighbors came by saying, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.” The man just said, “We’ll see.” The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed every young man, but the farmer’s son was spared, since his broken legs prevented him from being drafted. All the neighbors came by saying, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!” The man just said, “We’ll see.”
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Tattoo worthy?
"Losing money indefinitely isn’t just a financial failure. It represents a failure to truly understand how a service or product is creating value for a customer, how to communicate that value, and how to persuade the customer to pay above and beyond for that value."
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