I’ve recently been giving advice to some pre-launch startups about their user interface and initial set of features.  After re-reading one of the emails I sent, it seemed to me that the concepts are pretty universal and maybe apply to your project.

• Less Is More. If you can remove features from the service in the near term, it is beneficial for everyone.  Your developers will have less work, your users will have less learning curve, and you’ll more clearly be able to interpret early usage data.  If you’re not familiar with the term Minimum Viable Product, google it, might be helpful.
• Use Sensible Defaults. Whenever possible, pick something for the user, and only allow them to change it if they need to.
• Stub Future Features. To get better ‘interest’ data on specific future features, you can create links/buttons to non-existent features.  ie:  ’Click Here to Change the Answer Duration’ –> This feature is not yet implemented, but we want to see how many people would be interested in using it.  Would this feature be useful to you [Yes] [No] Leave us additional comments…  You can count clicks and get very direct comments about each prospective new feature.

Entrepreneurs form peer groups which provide a trusted circle of support and constructive criticism for each other. Often, this peer group is used as a sounding board for new ideas – sometimes bad ideas.

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.

Remote working has become more and more prevalent in today’s corporate world.  With an eye on saving money on travel, energy, and other personnel related expenses companies are starting to look for software solutions that cut costs and increase productivity. Some friends of mine in Atlanta have come up with an application that seeks to address the problem of many remote apps not being immersive enough, or not having enough personality. Their company, called Meetsee, is a 2.5D virtual office built using Flash.  According to their site, Meetsee is:

“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.

Many people are cynical about their impact on the political process.

Does my vote really count? Do my representatives care what I think?

One innovative website is focused on helping answer these questions while making it easier for every citizen to get involved in the democratic process is Freedom Speaks.  This week, Freedom Speaks launched a new set of APIs and widgets to help make it easier to create new democracy-focused applications.

To understand the power of their platform in action, let’s see if you can answer this simple question:

Who are your political representatives in federal and state government?

If you move to a new home, aren’t really active in politics, or don’t want to visit 3-4 government websites to lookup this information, then Freedom Speaks is for you.

Of course, all of this information is available online, but it takes at least 2 searches to find your federal congressional reps, and every state has a different way of finding those state representatives.  Too much work, and yet another reason to stay complacent in the political process.

Try out their new widget, so you can be informed at your next dinner-table debate:

Developers should checkout the API Information here.