Category Archives: rants

Beyond the Clouds …

… lies asphyxia, hallucinations, brain-damage and death.

Depending on where you are on the planet, cirrocumulus, cirrus, and cirrostratus clouds can form as high as 60,000 ft. At this height, atmospheric density is half that at sea level. Or, each breath contains roughly half the oxygen you’d be breathing at sea level. At sea level, oxygen level is 21%. At only 19%, a normal person has a decreased ability to work strenuously and impaired coordination. At 15%, respiration and pulse increases, coordination decreases further, and perception is impaired. At 12%, you have a further rate of increase in respiration and pulse, bluish lips, and poor judgement. At 10%, which is what you are effectively breathing at 60,000 ft, you have nausea, vomiting, mental failure, fainting, and in the weak, unconsciousness as you slowly asphyxiate and begin to hallucinate your way to brain damage, and, eventually, death.

Remember this next time one of those valley solution providers offers to take you beyond the clouds!

Share This on Linked In

Does NDA Stand For “No Discovery Anymore”?

While the life expectancy of the average human in many developed countries now approaches 80 years, the life expectancy of the average company is much shorter. Only 44% of companies make it to the 4 year mark, and only 31% to the seven year mark. Only a handful of the tens upon tens of thousands of companies started every year will live to see the end of their fifth decade.

Why is that? Well, while it’s hard to succeed, it’s easy to fail. Perhaps the product isn’t appealing to enough prospects. Maybe the marketing team isn’t reaching the right audience, or the sales team isn’t conveying the right message. The price could be too high. There might be a sudden cash flow crisis due to an unforeseen dip in sales. The entrepreneurs could be poor managers. The investors or owners may become too greedy, and stifle innovation. And so on.

Even if a company survives long enough to bring a product to market and reach a point where it is cash flow positive, its chances of survival increase only marginally. In order to stay in business, it has to keep selling. That means it needs to offer a product that the market wants. That means, especially in some markets, that it has to keep coming up with new products and services. It has to keep innovating, and keep discovering. While some companies can do this, many can’t. Like Rick Astley, they are effectively a one-hit wonder, and if you buy their product you’ve been rickrolled.

One of the ideas I’ve been tossing around is how best to identify when a company reaches the point where it stops being an innovator and starts becoming a renovator. In other words, when is it that a company essentially offers the same solution that it offered last year, only with a fresh coat of paint. For many companies, this is the beginning of the end, since if you can’t innovate you’ll die. Of course there are some companies who specialize in buying up and renovating end-of-life products, getting a few years of new revenue and maintenance out of each acquisition (until the customers finally get fed up and migrate to a different solution). But we’ll leave such bottom-feeders out of the equation.

After studying the rise and fall of a number of software companies, particularly in the e-Commerce and Supply Chain space, I think I’ve found an indicator of the turning point. I think it’s when a company insists that you sign an NDA before it shows you a product that has been released into production. Why? Well, let’s think about it. What is the logic behind requiring an NDA before doing a demo? Obviously there are many people using the application, and it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to look over a shoulder or two if one really wanted to. So there are no secrets to protect, because the application is out there working, and presumably it’s being sold to anyone with a check book.

Maybe in order to show the application, the company has to show “real” data from a “real” customer. Well, yikes. I don’t want to see those data, and they shouldn’t be showing them to me. If a company can’t figure out how to sanitize a data set for demo purposes, it probably can’t write decent software either.

So what is being protected? Well, if I were running a company that was simply slapping a new coat of paint on an old offering every year, I’d be pretty nervous about showing it to the media — unless I locked them up with an NDA. That way, if they discover that I’m pawning off the same old s**t as last year and the year before, they can’t say anything about it, because they’re bound and gagged. On the other hand, if I were running a company with an offering that had substantial new features every year, I’d be eager to show it to the media. Good press is worth its weight in gold.

So, from now on when I hear “you need to sign an NDA,” I’m going to think “No Discovery Anymore”. I can only conclude that the fire of innovation is gone from your company, reduced to embers which are about to go cold and dark. And I’m going to look elsewhere for inspiration, because there’s no point in writing post-mortems. Just like pointless dumb conversations, that doesn’t help buyers with their needs.

Share This on Linked In

I Guess Some Companies Still Can’t Do Simple Math!

I was shocked by this recent headlin on CNet that said that “companies conserving water [are] surprised by savings”. After all, simple math alone demonstrates the savings potential.

Let’s say you have a chain of 50 small hotels that each use 1,000,000 gallons of water per month. That’s a monthly utility bill of roughly $100,000 (in the US). That’s a yearly utility bill of $1,200,000. Let’s say you installed water efficient bathroom fixtures, washing machines, and appliances and cut water utilization by 30%, which is not unreasonable. That’s an annual savings of $360,000! Now imagine you’re a larger hotel chain or an international brewery. Simple math and you quickly see that it’s a multi-million dollar opportunity.

So don’t be surprised next time a sustainability initiative generates massive savings. That’s ultimately what sustainability means.

Share This on Linked In

Is The Road to Riches Paved With Oil?

… and blood?

According to this recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Scott Adams, if you want to get rich, put your money on companies that you hate the most because the usual reason for hating a company is that the company is so powerful it can make you balance your wallet on your nose while you beg for their product. Why? Those companies are typically wildly successful and the type that will generate a big return on your investment. Like the oil companies. One accident turns paradise into purdition, but they still get richer and more powerful. And if they have a Dogbert in charge, with a Catbert managing human resources, they do even better. Which leads me to ask, is the road to riches paved with oil, or, as the recent rash of suicides at a major manufacturer appear to demonstrate, blood?

The Dumbest Conversation I’ve Ever Had

When SI reviews a product, SI insists on a demo. It’s very simple. If you can’t show me a demo, then I have nothing to say. I’m not interested in your PowerPoints or your opinions about the marketplace or your scuttlebutt about your competitors. I have one question, and one question only: Where’s the Beef?

Two days ago, one of the largest independent vendors in our space offered to provide a demo so that SI could cover them. Then, yesterday, they insisted on an NDA. This is the second time I’ve had this conversation in a month. And I’m as dumbfounded now as I was last month.

As per the FAQ, SI will not cover any company that insists on an NDA. Please don’t tell us any corporate secrets, we don’t want to know them. What good are corporate secrets if they are revealed under an NDA and they cannot be written about? Furthermore, SI has no interest in them. SI is not a gossip column that hints around at this or that. That’s why SI can’t be manipulated by marketing people. We don’t care what you have coming next month or next year, unless it can be written about. We’re not going to “hint around” that we “know something important” about your product line or your future plans. That’s not what we do here. You can go to dozens of other sites for that.

At SI we are into reality, not fantasy. And in the real world a company’s released products are not corporate secrets.They are in the public domain. Everyone sees them. Everyone uses them. I am no different than anyone else who has seen the product. How on earth am I supposed to write about your product if you tie me up with an NDA? It would be the dumbest conversation ever, and the most worthless article ever published on SI. Not that worthless articles aren’t published daily on dozens and dozens of other sites, but as I said, you can go to those other sites if you like worthless articles.

Forgive me, but I am deeply suspicious of any company that won’t demo their product to me. (And I’m glad to say that there aren’t many that have officially refused. In fact, to date, only four companies have officially refused. However, the four that have refused are four of the eight biggest companies in the space. And that is worrisome.) SI is not in the business of product bashing — and if you look at my past reviews of dozens upon dozens of solutions, if nothing else, this one fact should be abundantly clear. I have great respect for anyone or any company that brings a product to market. Having done it myself a few times (as I am not your average liberal-arts blogger with no other marketable skill, but a CS PhD who has designed, architected, implemented, and brought a number of e-Commerce and e-Sourcing platforms to market), I know for a fact that it is not easy to do that. No matter what you might hear, it never is.

Take me up on my challenge! Every review SI has ever done is archived on the blog. The majority are indexed in this post (which is updated a few times a year). If the product solves a problem in our space, it will be written that it solves a problem in our space. Any product that has made it to market that actually works and actually provides value is a product that somebody somewhere can use. It’s SI’s job to let that somebody know about it. That’s what we do here.

I can’t figure it out. What are these vendors afraid of?

Share This on Linked In