A lot of great things have been written and done in honor of Steve Jobs. Eventually it all translates to one thing for me personally - unquestionable customer loyalty and ridiculous drive, desire and lust to own all things Apple.

Some screens I collected after innumerious attempts and clicks over 2 hours (from midnight to 2am) to pre-order the iPhone 4S trying all possible options including calling 1-800-MY-APPLE. It took so much time due to high volumes - I was not the only one as we all exchanged notes on Twitter on our attempts

On apple.com

on att.com

on the Apple Stores app on the iPhone

To celebrate and get all giddy just to see this

Siri - know any company that has ONE customer this loyal and fanatical?

I have written a few posts on the fear and benefits of asking questions. 

So when I read this post on TechCrunch that Google had internally eliminated the 'search' group and renamed it knowledge, it made a think a little about its anatomy.

Data (record) --> information (mine) --> knowledge (question)

Questioning is a very subjective observation applicable to myself and probably has been the single biggest tool for me to learn. Needless to say with my obsession with asking questions, I am a big proponent of the socratic approach to acquire knowledge to think critically.

As per Wikipedia:

The classical definition, described but not ultimately endorsed by Plato, specifies that a statement must meet three criteria in order to be considered knowledge: it must be justified, true, and believed. 

Evidence makes something true, reasoning (which can also be derived from questioning) something justified and social proof i.e people make something (more) believable.

Google's continuous 'search' for a powerful social initiative is public. So should Google consider launching Google Answers (which I happened to use in my post on Overcoming No just recently)?

1. It was launched in as Google Questions and Answers in 2001. Then launched as Google Answers in 2002 and came out of beta in 2003. Eventually shut down even before the web really turned social - Facebook had about 12M active users then.
2. So far Quora seems to be doing a decent job at it (though accepted in a very narrow niche it seems) and Facebook launched it too. LinkedIn has it. Twitter has it - just not productized.
3. And yes - please make it free. If you can give away an OS free, yes - you can.
4. It can continuously feed new content to one's Google profile instead of getting stale
5. And of course, you could "+1" any answer and question

Why would you not do this?

I found the amount of news on the white iPhone personally pretty asotnishing. When will it be available? How tough it was to make and how it was sllliiighty (0.2mm) thicker than the black one followed by confirmation reports on the confirmation that it was not. So I went over to Google Trends to find that the white iPhone is even more popular than RIM's PlayBook and Motorola's Xoom today

Of course, when you bring in the iPad, everything is diminished to insignificance

It is incredible that only one different color of a phone (the iPhone 4 has been available for about a year now and the iPhone itself since 2007 i.e. 4 years) can peak more curiosity and following than two completely new, built from ground up in a completely new category for RIM and Motorola (the first entry into tablets for both companies) and launched only within the last 2 months. Xoom was released on Feb 24, 2011 and the PlayBook was released on April 19, 2011 and here are theri sales numbers: Motorola Xoom and RIM Playbook. I wonder if a white Ford would have created similar interest in 1914 to 1926 when Model Ts were only black ..

I empathize with RIM and Motorola. 

Thing 1

Sometime ago, I remember listening to a podcast of Craig Barrett, then the Chairman of Intel and one thing got stuck in my head - if you want to compete and win (especially with incumbents), change the rules of the game.

• Google - they take a paid product and make it free. Android is probably the best example of that today. So free is now Google's rule.
• Markus Frind of Plenty of Fish - took Match.com, eharmoney's business model and made it free
• MySpace and Facebook - First MySpace changed the rules on Friendster by letting Fakesters on [Read about it all in Stealing MySpace] and then Facebook reverted back and changed MySpace's new rules and said no to Fakesters

• Netflix - it changed the rules that we all played by with Blockbuster with no late fees and receiving movies by mail. Now it continues to change its own rules to bring streaming movies that will eventually cannabilize its own "mail rent" DVD business
• Media - suddenly the Internet enabled distribution for free for anyone with a keyboard
• iTunes - unbundled the CD to singles. I am betting something similar is bound to happen with cable

Thing 2

Steal Apple's "playbook". As Steve Jobs quoted Picasso, Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal. If you don't, you will be dancing to the (i)tunes of the Pied Piper of Cupertino   

[Update: the credit for this post goes to the positive feedback by Abbey Klaassen, the Editor of Adage when I met her]

I ride two motorcycles now (Honda VFR 800 and a Harley Sporster) and have been for over 15 years now (a Yamaha RX 100 in India and then a Yamaha 850 prior to these).
A tenet that motorcyclists ride with is:

You are going to get hit if someone does not see you and you are going to get hit if someone does see you

Startups are very much like that - no matter how much they are all 'killing it'

My other favorite metaphor for startups is the small army of Spartans, led by Leonidis against the mighty persian emperor, Xerxes in the Battle of Thermopylae. Here is my prior post on that: This is Starta

 

Below - the bag I carried from India when I first 'got off the boat' at San Francisco airport on August 29, 1999, which still feels like yesterday. I had never been out of India before then. I was headed to B-School at the Monterey Institute of International Studies with the essential guidebook to help me navigate. Net worth on arrival - a whopping $500!

Some other baggage:

- Driving on the left
- Driving through lights and definitely through stop signs
- Not smiling at strangers: with over a billion of those, I could have audited for the Dark Knight
- Moving the switch downwards to turn on a light
- Meeting people in business without appointments
- Following the 'social product roadmap' : secure employment, wife, kids, maybe a home someday and eventually retirement. Definitely none of the startup stuff
- Saying 'Thank You' parsimoniously

It is amazing how lack of resources and desire (or need) to achieve something can make one think differently. I was unemployed ..umm .. vocationally challenged ... for 3 years during the dot com bust times and so here is the card I got printed for myself to "network" better.

It was .. is .. always work getting my name - Mrinal - through. I also learnt to turn off spelling suggestions in Microsoft Word.

So instead of getting myself a new name, I decided to leverage the problem i.e the name I was born with. It turned out to be very successful because:

1. It was interactive (I always carried a pen with me when I went to events to network and would make the other person write my first name down and fill in the blank)
2. My card was always the most different
3. It had a great recall factor for the follow up email
4. They never forgot how to spell my name
5. It always led to a discussion around the name - where does the name come from? Does it mean anything? Why didnt you change it? etc.

Now at a coffee shop, before the caffeine and mentally incapicitated, I go by my 'name of the month'. Little did I realize, this does comes with a huge responsibility of actually responding to the name call.

Now I am even more inspired since the anagram for my last name, Desai, is Ideas.

In case you missed this from yesterday, this guest post of mine is in reaction to the Wall Street Journal report that Twitter was in talks to acquiring TweetDeck for $50M.

Read the full post here: here are 5 Reasons Why Twitter will kill TweetDeck 

My other guest posts on TechCrunch:

• LinkedIn is about to Make Headlines (March 9, 2011)
• Screening The News (Nov 21, 2009)
• Is Twitter Turning into Myspace (April 1, 2009)

My guest Posts on Advertising Age:

• Apple Tries to Break Online Advertising to Save it (June 25, 2010)
• Four Ways to Save the Palm Brand (March 23, 2010)

Due to my (long term) unemployment in the last dot com bust, one of the best outcomes out of it for me personally was getting very very comfortable with being ignored, hearing a no or as some like to phrase it - being rejected. If you have never experienced this, I would highly recommending practicing (do it where it the outcome does not matter - for the sake of it .. maybe with a random stranger) and seeking it out. 

Getting rejected is far far better than being ignored. During my unemployment, I would be mostly ignored and and on the rare occasion, I would hear a polite no. When I approached LinkedIn first for a job in 2003, it was a polite No since they were not hiring business people. I stayed in touch for over a year and eventually went to work there as their first business development manager in 2004 when they had about 15-20 employees.

First and foremost, very very often, it is the fear of rejection which stops us from trying. It is amazing how often we are wrong. You can always try and fail, but never fail to try.   

Now, if you have overcome the fear, here are 10 things that helped me:  

1. Always always keep moving (to the next alternative job, investor, date etc.). You might be wrong but not moving is definitely, wrong. Nothing happens until you do something.
2. Never accept no since the only one who can can stop you in your tracks, is you. Henry Ford said 'Whether you can or can not, you are right"
3. Realize that it is not about you. Put on some blinders on and stay focused on the goal
4. Most people who say no to you are not empowered to do so but you would if you do as they say 
5. Often (like in the case of my 3 years long unemployment), you are looking for only one yes so keep going since it is a matter of time
6. People are busier than ever now you are not their priority
7. We all seem to be about make ourselves successful first .. few are focused on others especially if they do not see any returns from you easily.
   Why on earth would someone want to help a guy that goes by an impossible name to pronounce - Mrinal, is fresh out of college and has never worked in the US?
8. Almost nothing valuable is easy and if it is coming easily, you are not pushing the envelope. The value will be fleeting. Read about hedonistic adaptation - the harder the struggle, the longer it will take to reach "equilibrium" and become blase about your last achievement
9. Everything can be practiced - do more and often differently and work towards more Nos. I would recommend you integrate a feedback measure to make the practice meaningful to improve on each initiative.
10. More optimistically (Yes - its an attitude that helps), If anything, No is an indicator that you are onto something and "wisdom of the crowds" does not get it  

The good news is that you are not the only one getting rejected - you are in the good company of people like Michael Jordan, Walt Disney and J.K.Rowling to name a few.

Finally, you may not realize this but practice started very early for all of us and you might be thicker than you think:

A UCLA survey from a few years ago reported that the average one year old child hears the word, No!, more than 400 times a day!

If you are experienced at this, I would love to hear your ways so that I can practice them.

Twitter has been one of my favorite social tools even though I have had to be laughed at by many naysayers in the early days and still work on converting more to see its value. Having said that, Twitter as a company has been a little underwhelming overall in terms of product development for me personally. Even the biggest new feature enhancement, the #newtwitter seemed a lot like Atebits' (which got acquired by Twitter) Tweetie for iPad.

So here are some features that the users on Twitter helped productize - on or off of Twitter

• @ user name
• the hashtag #
• Today Google launched +1 .. many many users on Twitter retweet with a +1. Below are a couple of examples of Tweets with the '+1' from months ago
  
  
  

Twitter features being used elsewhere:

• LinkedIn - you can follow discussions (in groups) and companies
  
• Quora - follow questions, topics and people
  
  
• Facebook - follow questions
  
• Facebook - tag a person in a status update or comment with @ user name
  

Did I miss any?