The protocol for providing critical, constructive criticism is an oft-overlooked aspect of being an active and valuable participant in entrepreneurial networks and is a delicate topic I want to tackle head-on in this post.

Sometimes telling your entrepreneurial colleague that their ‘baby is ugly’ is the best thing you can do for them. Time is the most valuable resource we possess and helping entrepreneurs figure out where best to spend their time is critical. When bad ideas come to light, honest, thoughtful criticism, delivered clearly and respectfully can be invaluable.

Delivering criticism is always a delicate art. These issues can make it even more difficult:

• If the entreprenuer has already committed time and/or money to the project
• If it is a labor of love, created from a some emotional personal experience
• If it is a close friend – or worse – family member
• If you are successful and they are not
• If they are successful and you are not (’success’ is of course relative)
• If your assessment turns out to be wrong

Be conscious of these issues, but when you’re asked, delivering your opinion is not just a favor, it’s the right thing to do. Here are my suggestions for handling the situation:

• Confirm they actually want feedback. Sometimes people are just floating ideas by and don’t really want feedback. Make sure you understand the inquiry and they really are asking for your feedback.
• Follow the basic rules of critical feedback:
  • Say something nice
  • Deliver the bad news
  • End on a high note
• Explain Your Position. Thoughtful feedback is 1000 times more useful than flat, terse criticism. If the idea is entering an already hyper-competitive market and has no competitive advantage, then ask questions to help illustrate the scale and complexity of the competitive landscape.
• Share Your Perspective. If you are a successful entrepreneur, there are probably more than a few critical attributes which you look for in new opportunities. Share them and discuss how they may be missing from the idea at hand.
• Suggest Next Steps. Great businesses rarely become successful in the same form they start out in. Sometimes an OK idea can lead to other more interesting opportunities, which can lead to a great insight, which can lead to the next YouTube, Google, or NetFlix. However, sometimes ideas are just bad. If you’re sure that the direction is wrong, be honest: ‘I think you should look for something else’
• You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know. If I was asked to provide feedback on a new company for an innovative automobile engine, I’d have to recuse myself from providing much feedback. I drive a car, I know there are lot’s of cars sold, but short of high level ‘market’ stuff – I’d be out of my league. Let people know when you don’t know what about the domain or market being discussed.

There is a time and a place for white-washed, head-nodding agreement, and avoiding conflict. Unfortunately, the circle of trust formed by entrepreneurial peer groups is not one of them. As a fellow entrepreneur, you have a responsibility to provide honest feedback, help educate other entrepreneurs and ensure that the Founder Class creates value and innovation and doesn’t waste time on poorly conceived ideas.

In chapter 1, he built a little film company called Pixar that helped a bigger company Disney stay relevant during an otherwise tough time for the mouse.  Since Pixar’s films represented the lion’s share of revenue during their relationship, and Disney never developed any of their own digital skills, they picked up Pixar – along the way making Steve Jobs the single largest shareholder of Disney stock.

In chapter 2, while music industry exec played ivory tower games and attempted to turn off the internet with attorneys and fruitless DRM efforts, Steve took the novel approach of vertically integrating music distribution with the personal computer and a line of devices that turned digital music into mobile assets that you could pack in your pocket. These efforts have put Apple on a path that today controls over 70% of digital music sales and could account for 28% of all music sales in 5 years.

In chapter 3, Steve decided that he could apply his smarts to the telecommunications industry, in one fell swoop, creating more innovation with the iPhone than the industry had seen since the creation of the mobile phone itself – fundamentally changing the way people interact with their phones.

Obviously much more can be written about each of these chapters, as well as the previous period which led to this series of breakthroughs, however the point of this post is a prediction about what I believe will be the next major chapter in the Apple Story:

CHAPTER 4: Re-inventing Television

Image: Dan Wiersema (http://www.danwiersema.com/)

Like music distribution and the mobile phone, the television industry finds itself in a transitional period.  The industry has been devoid of significant innovation since the advent of color.  HD, cable, satellite, DVRs, and now Internet TV are fairly obvious, incremental improvements, but even these improvements lfailt to deliver a fulfilling user experience.  It’s the same vacuum that was felt by the music industry, and the mobile phone user before Apple delivered their solution.  It’s a huge market to boot, and Apple now knows everything it needs know to enter in a meaningful way.

Here are some of the factors that frame this prediction:

• Apple has significant investments in flatscreen manufacturing with Samsung and LG
• the current Apple TV box is a test, to learn things about the market and user experience
• The experience of flattening hardware ala MacBook Air enables Apple to fit lots of gear in the back of an LCD case
• A line of high quality, flatscreen TVs with wifi + storage + an elegant remote + great media browsing UI would be a leap ahead for the TV marketplace (my Motorola DVR remote control has more buttons than my computer keyboard – count ‘em) – clearly an area where some iPhone like UI magic could assist

I’d suggest that Apple’s entry into the convention TV marketplace is inevitable – guessing when is a much harder task. Analyst Piper Jaffray suggests it will be in 2011, but I think we might hear something as soon as at the June 2009 Developer Conference.

There are many more reasons why this is a great next step for Apple – share your thoughts in the comments.

“Your personal virtual office is a space online filled with rich
ways to communicate, share content, collaborate on documents,
and build rapport between remote co-workers.”

I signed up for my free virtual office on their Web site. You can choose between four different office templates that come bundled with a set of furniture and tools that you can use. Navigating my office was easy enough by just clicking on objects such as chairs, filing cabinets, and TVs to interact with them.

My Meetsee Office

The goal of any virtual office or meeting space is to facilitate communication between remote parties as easily as possible, and to make sharing information feel natural.  Having recognizable objects with familiar functionality is a strong point of Meetsee’s application. They rely on common metaphors in their environment, for example, the TV plays videos. 

To that effect, my room came with a whiteboard, an entertainment system for playing YouTube videos, a filing cabinet to share files, a clock, and a corkboard where people can leave photos, messages, or weird little animated stickers. I was also able to add new stuff to the room, like a news ticker style RSS viewer and a Twitter display. You can even open the tools in a bigger window.

My Meetsee Office Preview

Meetsee gives the room owner a lot of control over how their office or meeting space is used.  You can choose various permission levels that change what other users are or are not allowed to do, and you can even track room activity from a report on the site.

You can add your virtual office to your Web site or even your Facebook profile. If you want to check out my office you can jump in as a guest:

The (currently free) upgrade to a Meetsee Plus account gave me access to new tools including audio conferencing, a presentation viewer, web cams and new virtual meeting rooms. These tools provide all the basics to conduct successful business meetings and have integration with all the standards you’d expect: YouTube, Flickr, PowerPoint, RSS, and Twitter. 

My Meeting Room

For a virtual office, I could see many uses for my Meetsee room. The web cam would definitely be nice to have for meeting “face to face” with my remote team members.  The ability for my remote collborators to share virtual space together has the potential to really change the way we work.

Since Meetsee is currently in public Beta, all upgrades are free.  This means you can jump in and check out their more advanced features, like web cam and user networks.  There are many options for remote work and granted there are some that would prefer the colder, simpler style of doing things, however if adding personality to the experience is for your team, then I highly recommend checking out Meetsee.

You can start out by signing up at Meetsee.com or by adding their Facebook App.