trendpreneur

I’m trying to catch up on the notable talks of LeWeb — so far I haven’t seen anything revolutionary come out of it, but a few interesting things, so it’s hard to figure out what to watch (especially since my attention span for online video is absolutely terrible; I prefer transcripts 90% of the time). Still, this talk caught my eye as danah’s work is pretty awesome. It’s definitely worth a watch (and it has a transcript/crib, yay!).

There were two main themes as I understand it; firstly the concept that we all see the Internet differently, and secondly the question of whether we are looking or not. The former is something that’s fascinated me for a while. Being able to see someone else’s world through their eyes — through unedited honest life-stream social media updates, through their Facebook photos, etc — can verge on gratuitous voyeurism. It’s taking the idea of a reality celeb to a new level, in a way. Internet superstars don’t have to be A-list or royalty, they can just be the sort of people whose wry observations about daily life (be it a blog, YouTube channel or even Twitter stream) are entertaining and a form of escapism.

As well as e-stalking interesting people, the more useful (and far more voyeuristic) side of this is e-stalking people I vaguely know. Catching up on old friends’ or past acquaintances’ lives via their LinkedIn, Facebook photos, etc; it somehow seems all right to live vicariously through people if you’ve actually met them. Kinda.

The second theme is about the ugly stuff. There’s a lot of nasty things that happen in this world and increasingly, victims are talking about them online. Bullying isn’t more prevalent now than it used to be, but it is more visible, and the problem is that people assume that there’s an automatic equation between stuff being online and stuff being seen. As anyone who’s ever written a blog knows, you can often be writing for an audience of one, and even if you have a hundred Myspace friends, there’s no guarantee anyone’s listening. Or that their reports to the authorities of your accounts of mistreatment at home will ever get taken seriously.

It’s sort of a cross between Neighbourhood Watch and “eyes on the street“. We need to look out for the disturbing stuff, violence, crime, etc., and use that constructively to help people, to open up conversations rather than jump to conclusions. Because appearance is everything, and someone posting about drug use or self-harm on their Livejournal might be doing it to fit in, not as a cry for help. It’s so hard to find where the boundaries are between the projected image you want to create online, and the real self underneath. The move towards real-time stream-of-consciousness updating kind of helps, but even a simple tweet such as “Help me” needs to be taken in context.

I’m not at LeWeb (though Steven is), but two cool things have come out of it so far today.

Firstly, firehose access — hurrah!

Secondly, Tweetminster Search (TechCrunch link) is… interesting. It’s a very hard problem to get right, measuring the sentiment of Twitter against a particular term; if the search term is “Labour”, do you search for tweets with the term “labour” in, expand the lexicon based on domain knowledge (“Government”, “Gordon Brown”), or perhaps search every tweet by a Labour MP? The methods and results seem to be in a very early stage right now, but this is something I’ve been thinking about and looking into, so cut them some slack for the rough edges. (Having said that, I will level this one criticism: as the service stands, I can’t really find anything useful out.)

Visualisation of political opinion, trend-spotting, disaster management and voting prediction are all going to become super hot over the next few months. Tweetminster Search is timely, and the mentioned API will be something definitely worth playing with; one area Tweetminster definitely adds value in is the curation of domain knowledge, i.e. maintaining a list of MPs and related Twitter accounts (news etc), and presumably caching those tweets. Firehose or no, having a readymade domain specific API is a NLP hacker’s dream. Honest.

Due to the WiFi seriously dying on me today (though it was mostly fine yesterday – go figure) I tended to tweet today’s sessions in bursts — the bursts corresponding to me being online and actually in the session, rather than offline but in the session, online but not in the session, or offline talking to someone interesting. Anyway.

In a reverse kind of order, here are a few Day 2 goodies. The day ended on a Gillmor Gang live session which consisted mostly of overweight loud Americans shouting at each other — with a surprising detour into a quiet and all-too-brief discussion on news filtering algorithms. One of the things about this panel that appeared on the Twitterstream was the fact it lacked women. I’ve also seen a few comments here and there about the number of women at LeWeb. Plus, a brief exchange that sparked at least one tweet — when asked what the audience liked about Google’s presentation at LeWeb, it’s apparently perfectly fine to note that the (female) speaker was “hot”.
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A mixed bag from the afternoon’s sessions, most of which can be summed up in one tweet or less. Currently in a ’state of funding’ panel with a couple of strong, if well-trodden, themes — yes, people are still getting funded, and if you can run on your own cash through 2009 you’ll be fine — having a great idea is key, and plenty of startups have great ideas now — and revenue is key. You won’t get funded with no sign of revenue and funding yourself through sales is a solid plan in the current climate.

Quite an interesting contrast between US/European points of view – some speakers are American, others European. European attitudes are perhaps more helpful now, pointing towards incubators, government initiatives vs American “VC is everything” outlook, the very thing that’s failing in the downturn.

Couple of other points from the afternoon – Morten Lund was very candid about losing everything (about to lose his house) in an investment gone wrong, and then Martin Vasavsky also mentions being bankrupt for a month in 1998. Seems like finally some realism’s entering the fray rather than the happy “see no evil” approach. I’m not sure whether they can give any more advice than “have a solid idea and make money early” – but it would be interesting to see a focus on angels as well as VCs.

Susan Wu gave a really interesting talk about virtual goods (with a slightly… weird WoW example, but then I’m too nerdy by half about that game). Consumer focused products, especially those with social components, can make money from virtual goods — think about the verbs people use to interact with each other and your product and monetise them! Gifting is primary example – but there’s also stuff like getting a ‘premium’ name, and of course the (tired but still true) example of avatar customisation. Biggest Chinese internet platform makes 70% of revenue through virtual goods (basically an IM service). Quite cool to think about this from a web point of view rather than a gaming one.

There was also a panel on branding and a couple of the main things coming from that were – brands make mistakes and by trying to build a one-to-one conversation with customers but using the wrong platform, a lot of money can be lost (and even reputation/image). However when they work they’re great. But brands, especially middle management, need analytics and to see where the money is – something that helps a brand figure out how much money they’re making by having a presence on your service is great – ROI is key. Pretty interesting given one of the things I’m trying to do with my software…

Couple of really cool things from the pre-lunch session. Firstly, the conductor Itay Talgam spoke about.. conducting and stuff. I missed most of that but got there in time to be part of an audience singalong. A nice idea in theory – he ended up dividing the audience into four segments to sing Frere Jacques. Except.. the segments were ‘men under 30′, ‘men over 30′ and similarly women. Now, there are a fair few women here but I’d still only peg it at about 2 in 10, so the latter two sections of the choir were pretty quiet. Oh well, it was quite a fun experience to bond a little with the people sitting nearby and I ended up with a smile on my face from it.

After the singing was a chat with Linda Avey from 23andme. A really interesting company but one pretty much every entrepreneur in the audience would be jealous of (having a cofounder married to a Google founder makes some things a little easy, no?). The possibilities from having a bank of users and their DNA are huge, from research via questionnaires to helping people trace their ancestry and find out more about their own health. The possibility that you find out things you didn’t want to from your DNA is there, but obviously nobody’s forcing you to spit in a tube and pay $400 or whatever.

Finally was a detailed and really fascinating presentation by Helen Fisher. An academic expert on love, Helen talked about the brain chemistry behind love and attraction as well as the four basic personality types that everyone’s made up of. It might not seem to be that relevant to business at first, but if we go back to one of Loic’s very first comments of the day — that being an entrepreneur is very much like being in love — it all starts to fall into place.

Let’s take these traits that Helen outlined as symptomatic of romantic love (as opposed to lust and long-term affection). Focused attention; energy; euphoria and mood swings; emotional dependence (will do just about anything for the loved one); possessiveness; motivation; obsessive thinking; involuntary feelings. How many of these are just as applicable to the early-stage entrepreneur, throwing everything into a business, and desperately obsessing about it? Waking up in the middle of the night, making personal sacrifices, throwing everything else aside… Yes, love and entrepreneurship are more similar than one might think.

Taking this further, Helen outlined the symptoms of addiction and pointed out that love is, in many ways, as addictive as cocaine (but you can’t just stop taking love!). In the context of a rejected lover, traits such as focus, obsession, craving — plus tolerance (their faults are endearing) and withdrawal symptoms — are evident, and as with other addictions, despite months on the straight and narrow it’s very easy to relapse. The example given was hearing a song that reminded one of the target of one’s affections. How does this apply to business? Not quite so clear – but perhaps if we think of a failed business that we might pour everything into but ultimately has to be let go, the parallels start to emerge. Months after we buried it as a lost cause, perhaps something stirs off a spark of hope and we try again — only this time we’re determined to succeed. Is this why so many people are serial entrepreneurs? As opposed to staying in a long-term relationship with one business, and moving from obsession into the calm, relaxed state of affection, we move on and obsess about something new.

But why do some people start businesses and others don’t? This is where the four types of personality come into play. I initially started listening to this more keenly because of my familiarity with Bartle’s model of MMO gamer, but this is possibly more relatable to the Myers-Briggs scale and other such dividers. Only without the black-and-white “if you’re X, you can’t be Y”.

Each type is related to a particular chemical in the brain, so it’s all about biology and brain chemistry rather than socioeconomic factors (it’d be interesting to see a 3D scale with these involved too):

• Explorer (artisan) – dopamine, noreinephrine
• Builder (guardian) – serotonin
• Director (rational) – testosterone
• Negotiator (idealist) – oestrogen

The explorer type fits this bag of words: risk-taking, optimistic, impulsive, energetic, creative, autonomous, flexible, unconventional – but also manic, addictive, disorderly, opportunistic. Sarkozy and Obama are examples. Addressing the LeWeb audience Helen pointed out that many of us will have strong tendencies towards this type and higher amounts of dopamine.

In contrast, the builder type is far more orderly – they’re calm, social, managerial, fact-oriented, traditional, but also stubborn and close-minded. The word that came to mind when I thought of this was ‘middle management’, and examples given by Helen were Gordon Brown and Sarah Palin. Interestingly and perhaps predictably people in this type are more ‘red states’ sorts, who want to live in the suburbs or country – as opposed to the high dopamine types who get off on city buzz.

The director type is analytical, direct, focused, resourceful, understands rule-based systems, is emotionally contained and self-disciplined and exhibits heroic altruism (will jump into a burning building to rescue someone). They’re also less empathetic, impatient, rude, have poor verbal skills and a workaholic. Your typical geek falls quite solidly into this type, as do John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Check your hands – if your ring finger is longer than your index finger, you had plenty of testosterone in the womb and might exhibit many of these traits. (Mine’s significantly longer…)

Finally the negotiator type sees the big picture and is imaginative, with linguistic and people skills and can be nurturing, introspective, intuitive and idealistic. They might also be indecisive, unfocused and hypersensitive. Examples here were Bill Clinton and Jose Zapatero, though I think a lot of people reading the negotiator traits – a result of high oestrogen – would say ‘women’ are a good example. (Of course, tarring us all with the one brush is always a bad idea, but as generalisations go it’s not the worst I’ve seen).

What’s interesting is where these four types interact — for example someone with a high Explorer tendency but also a lot of Director is likely to be a tech entrepreneur, marrying the creativity and risk-taking of one with the analytical, geeky mindset of the other. A blogger is likely to lean more towards Explorer/Negotiator, being unconventional and energetic with a lot of linguistic and social skills. Helen’s also done research on how each type interacts when it comes to mating — explorers match up with builders, pairing stability with spontaneity, while negotiators and directors pair off. More on this will be in her book in January (plug alert!) but it’s interesting how this is all backed by looking at thousands of registered members on a dating site, observing and questioning people and their relationships.

Another interesting side effect of these chemically-grounded personality traits is what happens when you alter the brain’s chemistry. Looking at Helen’s latest blog post, there’s a sensible and important point made about SSRIs (selective serotonine reuptake inhibitors, a very common type of antidepressant). SSRIs raise levels of serotonin, helping with many of the symptoms of depression, but also suppress dopamine. Helen points this out as a bad thing because people who may only be suffering a short-term bout of depression might stay on SSRIs a lot longer than necessary, and dopamine is key to the way we experience romantic love — so what’s the effect of inhibiting this dopamine circuit over a long term, both on an individual and societal level?

I find this more fascinating when you go back to the love/entrepreneurship parallel, and also combine that with the fact that the swings associated with running a business mean that the lows can be vicious, leading an entrepreneur to perhaps seek medication. (In fact I read something recently linking manic depression with entrepreneurial tendencies, but the wifi’s down and I can’t find it right now.) So what happens when someone whose very core revolves around high-dopamine traits starts reducing this and becoming higher in serotonin? Does their basic personality change – do they stop taking risks and seek out safety? Would SSRIs, in fact, be enough to make a confirmed entrepreneur seek a day job? Scary stuff.