The weekly retweet

Busy! I’ve read about 4 books which I really should review, but I’m spending time on a side project.

• RT @msuster: Please help @colinmbower recover his kidnapped boys; TY @johnkerry for helping http://bit.ly/HelpColin” (Via @giffconstable)
• Can we date? (Funny flow chart once you get the hang of it) http://bit.ly/doLUgZ (Via @Twistedlilkitty)
• The Stock Market is still for Suckers and why you should put your money in the bank: I wrote… http://goo.gl/fb/PJbfG // Bonds? (Via @mcuban)
• This song will put a smile on your face. Promise. It’s called ‘Fu*k You’ – http://t.co/gcsGy6H (Via @Kevnmur)

The weekly retweet

A recap on any interesting links I posted or retweeted this week

• AJAX & SEO: A strategic approach to rankings http://t.co/Ow919PI via @tonyadam (Via @vlaskovits)
• RT: @benarent Product + Person Persona. http://bit.ly/av7NSO <- Very cool (Via @destraynor)
• Design for Hackers: Why You Don’t Use Garamond on The Web http://bit.ly/d0ebs6 // Great primer on screen fonts (Via @jarrold)
• RT @mcsweeneysbooks: Our Daughter Isn’t a Selfish Brat; Your Son Just Hasn’t Read “Atlas Shrugged” http://bit.ly/aBKdKy (Via @satishd)

The weekly retweet

It’s been quiet around here – I’m working on a couple of interesting projects which take up my time. Less time spent reading and writing, more time spent creating.

• HTML5 Boilerplate: a rock-solid default http://bit.ly/cN0znX (Via @newsycombinator)
• This actually happened. http://bit.ly/cIvFWF // Beyond awesome. New TV show, stress him every week and see how he flips out (Via @tysonrosage)
• “You repeat these mantras at Lean Startup Meetings but you’re not doing it.” /by @asmartbear http://ericri.es/bmA6Gr (Via @ericries)
• Good Read. RT @rmurphey: On jQuery & Large Applications http://post.ly/qwNJ (via @webOSdev) (Via @funkatron)

The weekly retweet

• This Is Why The American Dream Is Out Of Reach http://bit.ly/cQFl3q // This is GREAT (Via @newsycombinator)
• Inception ripped off a Scrooge McDuck comic http://bit.ly/bgIzy1 // Hah! (Via @miralize)
• The Magic 8-Ball Of Angel Investing http://on.wsj.com/aoWail (Via @ScottMAustin)
• Hyperbole and a Half: This is Why I’ll Never be an Adult http://bit.ly/ajsVya // Hillarious! (Via @cindyalvarez)
• rather hilarious http://whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com/index.php (Via @azeem)

The weekly retweet

It’s been quiet around here – catching on various projects up after a week in Germany and adjusting to some exciting changes in my work setup.

• I love this: http://www.sinn-frei.com/media/2010/13284_018.jpg #comicsans #typography (Via @stn1978)

The weekly retweet

A recap on any interesting links I posted or retweeted this week

• Any entrepreneurs on the fence about buying CustDev book use code ‘startup’ for a discount http://custdev.com/ (Via @stevecheney)
• RT @indiaknight: Swimming in the sky http://post.ly/lpPu // The pool was built by my father-in-law’s company – www.natare.com (Via @jackstow)
• I got an email from Steve Jobs! http://flic.kr/p/8fe8Hj (Via @ChrisPirillo)

In case you were on the fence about buying The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development, Patrick and Brant have issued a discount code. Simply enter the code “startup” for a discount.

http://www.custdev.com

When people ask me what my parents-in-law-to-be do for a living, I usually just say that they “Build Pools”. In terms of understatement, that description almost borders on insulting. Their company Natare (@NatareCorp) just finished creating the most impressive pool I’ve ever seen.  This pool is three times the size of an Olympic pool, 55 stories high, and spans three towers.  The engineering complexity of such a project is staggering; the pool joints have to handle stretching, compression, and torsion and the pool itself is designed to prevents waves forming – something that could be catastrophic in a pool like this.

The bigger story is in the company itself – 35 years ago it was a small company selling pool supplies! Through their ambition and focus they’ve grown to become the world’s premier supplier of aquatic facilities, water features, and movable bulkheads – having invented most of the techniques and systems themselves along the way. They’re the two hardest working people I’ve ever met, and lovely to boot. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

Natare's Infinity Pool on top of the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore - Nice View!

No, I can't get you a room

The Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore

From an interesting question on Quora -

“Why is Vodka so expensive?”

Because it is sold in expensive bottles.  The “juice” in a bottle typically costs less than $.10 to make.  The vast majority of vodkas in the US get their liquid from a few contract producers like ADM

Interpolate this into your average tech startup – The ‘value add’ for the majority of startups isn’t in using Ruby on Rails, or Cloud Storage, or a no-SQL database. It’s not in using the latest Agile techniques, or the best continuous deployment system (though all of these things help).  It’s how you make your users feel – Design, User Experience, and that disgusting practice that techies love to hate -  Marketing. Technology is a commodity*.

* There is still room for the disruptive technology innovations of your Google, but how many of those come along?

Having created and subsequently sold the ad network LinkExchange for some $275 million dollars before the dot com crash, you might think that Tony Hsieh would have been happy. A stable job at Oracle bored him, and after a abortive attempt at a web design business he created a simple ad network. Being in control of his own destiny kept him amused until the company grew into a place that no longer attracted the sort of people he wanted to work with. Soon, he was just as bored with LinkExchange as he was at his job in Oracle. “Delivering Happiness” is the condensed version of what he learned in starting Zappos – a company he swore wouldn’t attract people who were just there for the paycheck.

Overview

The early parts of the book are more of a personal memoir, and it’s clear from the onset that Hsieh has the entrepreneurial bug from the get go. He had various schemes to make money throughout his childhood, and several more for avoiding work. He’s got an relaxed writing style that feels more like an informal chat with a friend than anything else.

Zappos

Zappos seemed to happen by fortunate coincidence – Tony had set up an incubator fund after his sale of LinkExchange, and invested in Zappos. After some months, Zappos were running out of cash and with the dot com explosion destroying capital markets it didn’t look like they were going to raise any more money soon. Tony made the decision to invest, and then invest again, and then sold assets to keep the company going – the passion and experience of the founders was contagious and soon he stepped in as CEO.

Culture

If anything, the book is about Zappo’s famed culture. The culture of a company stems from the CEO – If the CEO wants great customer service and happy employees above all else you get Zappos. If the CEO wants profits above all else, customers get treated like cattle a la Ryanair. ‘Drinking the Koolaid’ is so important in Zappos that they regularly turn away highly technical candidates that could help their business simply due to misfit. Arrogant or egocentric employees don’t fit in with their team culture – they’re trying to create more of a family than just a business.  The driving force is to deliver amazing customer service – Zappos offers free shipping both ways, 365-day return policies, and regularly upgrades customer’s shipping to overnight shipping just to deliver that “wow” factor.

Summary

The book spends a lot of time explaining Zappo’s core cultural tenets, and explains their infamous rule to award any employee $2,000 if they want to leave. There’s also an interesting reworking of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in terms of career happiness. Is the information applicable to other companies? I think so. A lot of reasoning is given to the question of why they picked the specific cultural ‘rules’; each of them has good grounding in motivational psychology. This book is worth a read, if even to get an insight to what can be done when a company doesn’t have squeezing every drop of profit out of it’s customers as it’s main motivation.

You can read more about the book at the website here.

FCA nonsense: I received an advanced copy of this book, the review above is my honest opinion. I would have bought a copy anyway.