University of the People: Support a Student

I first met Shai Reshef, the indefatigable force behind University of the People, at DLD in 2009. Since then I have come to know Shai as someone who cares deeply about using education to empower people all around the world. He is taking quite a different approach from the MOOCs by scaling UoPeople much more slowly and deliberately and working diligently towards accreditation.

The approach has two premises. First, in many countries around the world a degree plays a dramatic role in changing the income trajectory for individuals. This has also been the insight behind Vittana which provides student loans. Second, Shai is looking to build a self sustaining model. To that end while courses at UoPeople are free, they charge a $10-50 application fee and a $100 exam fee per course. Because of UoPeople’s very lean model they can become self funding with only a few thousand students. From there Shai believes they can grow to tens and eventually hundreds of thousand students globally.

In the meantime of course $100 per course is still a huge amount of money in many parts of the world. Based on my advice, UoPeople has rolled out a micro scholarship program. Here you can give as little as $10 to help a student with his or her exams (there are mostly men because women currently receive a scholarship from HP). So if you are feeling fortunate because of where you are in life, go and help someone get the education to make their life better.

Google IO: Google Is the New Microsoft

Two years ago I wrote a blog post titled “Is Google the New Microsoft?” hedging it with a question mark. I think after the announcements at Google IO there can be very little doubt that Google is the new Microsoft.

Here is a short check list. Dominant position in one market that generates huge profits: check. Desire to compete in every large market from payments to games to music: check. Extending influence from one market into another by integrating products with each other: check.  Abandoning open standars such as RSS and XMPP: check. Having another large company in the field publicly accuse you of locking them out: check (and in the what-comes-around-goes-around department: that company happens to be Microsoft).

Now as a shareholder in Google since the IPO I have been very happy with Google’s performance. Yesterday Google’s shares reached a new all time high giving the company a market cap of over $300 billion. And if any of these new initiatives succeed there is more room for growth. On the other hand as someone who cares about the Internet as an open network and invests in startups I can only say: fasten your seat belts — the ride is about to get bumpy!

Defamatory Autocomplete (Information Cascades)

A court in Germany just ruled that Google must remove autocomplete suggestions is they are defamatory. Now at first blush this seems quite silly and Google has taken the position that they are simply reflecting what people are searching for. I don’t think it is quite that simple though.

This is clearly an example of where information cascades are possible and problematic. I have written about the issue of information cascades before, but this makes another great example. Imagine someone starting a rumor that you had previously worked as an escort (as happened with former German first lady Bettina Wolf). Now lots of people start searching for “Bettina Wolf escort” and soon enough the autocomplete for “Bettina Wolf” becomes “escort” thus cementing the initial rumor.

Information cascades like this are a problem not just because they might come about accidentally but also because they can be exploited explicitly for instance to smear a candidate for office (I am sure one could even use a bot net to get one of these going). A court ordered one-off removal system is unlikely to be the answer. Google and others (eg Twitter, Reddit) who are potential amplifiers of cascades, however, should be putting some of their brightest minds to work on how to detect these and potentially slow them down or remove them altogether instead of just claiming there is not a problem here.

Tech Tuesday: Topics to Cover?

The current Tech Tuesday series is about technology in startups. I started the series out with posts on initially choosing and evolving your technology. Since then I have been writing about best practices for growing and structuring your engineering team, with separate posts on hiring and retaining engineers and one on remote team members.

Now that I am eight posts into this series, I am curious what questions readers may have that I should cover in upcoming posts. Here are some ideas to get things going: addressing security (when and how?), using frameworks (good, bad, indifferent?) and technical debt (what to do about it?).

Please ask away in the comments!

More Misguided Laws Proposed: Science Funding and 3D Printing

Our elected representatives are busy at work coming up with misguided laws. Leading the charge once again is Lamar Smith, this time proposing to replace peer review of NSF grants with congressional criteria (Congress of course is not exactly known for its scientists). Now that is not to say that we shouldn’t look into how NSF funding works and propose changes to it. For instance, with crowdfunding platforms for science like Mircoryza emerging, it would be interesting to see if these can be used to make the NSF process more transparent and even route some NSF money through these types of platforms.

Another misguided effort comes from a state senator in California who is proposing to require registration of 3D printers because they could be used to print guns. This comes on the heels of the US government requiring a website to remove the files for a 3D printable gun. Why is this misguided even though I have been calling in general for more regulation of gun ownership? Because regulation should be about making it harder on the margin to obtain high performance weapons for the average person, not a one off weapon for the determined. It is the same reason why locking your front door makes sense even though you have a large glass window next to it.

I am somewhat hopeful that neither one of these will go anywhere. Still the rate at which legislation like this gets suggested or actually introduced is a good argument for having shorter sessions or otherwise limiting how many bills lawmakers can propose!

Simplify Your Pitch (Keep the Details for Later)

When I was an entrepreneur raising money I tended to make a classic mistake: trying to convey all the amazing things we were doing in great detail. This is a terrible strategy. Why? Because too much detail buries the story of your business and also makes your business seem, well, complex. And investors are afraid of complexity.

Imagine for a moment a pitch that describes in great technical detail creating a custom processor, a custom operating system, a new relationship between hardware producer and distributor, and so on. Now contrast this with Steve Jobs introducing the first iPhone. It tells a story that anyone can follow with essentially zero technical knowledge. Now ask yourself which pitch you would invest in.

Does that mean you shouldn’t be prepared to talk about technical details? Not at all. But you want them pulled from you by the audience instead of pushing them. By the way this is just another example of the less is more principle which applies incredibly broadly to communication and in particular when you are selling something. Whether it is a pitch to VCs, an idea for the team or a sale to a customer: tell a simple story that will get attention, then provide detail when it is asked for.

Toward a Better Patent System

Another topic that I have written a lot about here on Continuations are patents and in particular software patents. While there is a lot of reform that I would love to see I have also come to appreciate that sometimes the only way to get there is in small steps. One relatively meaningful step was just introduced by Senator Schumer. The basic idea is to allow for a much fast tracked review of many of the suspect business process patents used by patent trolls to sue startups and larger tech companies. Because of changes in the interpretation of patent law many of these fast track reviews have a good shot at invalidating the patents. For a more detailed comment on this proposal, please read Nick Grossman’s post over at USV.

Privacy: Sorry, You Can’t Have it Both Ways

There is so much happening with privacy right now that it is enough to make my head spin. What is clear though is that individuals, companies and government all want it both ways.

Some parts of government want private enterprise to do a better job of protecting individuals’ information from other individuals and companies. At the same time other parts of government are looking for wholesale access to individual data bypassing any and all privacy policies and constitutional rights. Sorry, you can’t have it both ways.

Similarly individuals want to be able to share information with more than 500 of their best friends on Facebook and yet have it be private. Sorry, you can’t have it both ways.

Companies want to gather tons of information about their customers but not disclose much or anything about their own activities or have third parties collect that information. Sorry, you can’t have it both ways.

We are entering unchartered territory here because of our amazing information gathering and sharing capabilities. As I have said before we need to start with a discussion of values first. I don’t believe that privacy is a value in and of itself. If you want to see my own grappling with this complicated topic, here are all my past posts on privacy.

Tech Tuesday: Remote Engineers

I have been writing the last couple of Tech Tuesdays about hiring and retaining engineers. One of the questions that comes up a lot in that context is what to do about people who are in other locations. Is it a good idea to have remote engineers? There are people who seem to have near religious believes about this ranging from it can never work to it being the only thing to get anything done.

In practice I have found that pretty much anything can work if you support it with the right culture and systems. I have seen both success and failure with entirely distributed teams (everyone is remote) and with entirely centralized teams. So what do you need to do if you have some remote engineers? Much of the following applies to whether they work individually from home or from a satellite office.

You need to invest heavily in communication. Having some kind of realtime channel seems to help a lot and IRC still appears to be the best way to do that. But in addition to realtime you also need to spend time on communicating company strategy, goals, values.

Having people come and visit so that they can meet in person at least once in a while also makes a big difference. There is some sense of being connected that comes from having met someone in person that is still quite difficult to establish purely online. 

It is very difficult to handle remote engineers (or remote employees of any kind for that matter) if you have a face time culture where being in the office for long hours is how performance is judged. In order to make remote work you have to have good systems for tracking progress and measuring individual productivity.

The one thing to be super careful about is to avoid any us vs. them mentality emerging. If there is any sign of that whether between two offices or between office and remote employees you need to get to the bottom of it immediately. That can become very corrosive quickly and hard to recover from if it goes on for some time.

Finally, not everyone is good at working remotely. Some people need the structure of an office environment. Others need the in person social interactions. So if you recruit someone to work remotely make sure there are some indications in their personality or history that this will be a good fit for them. 

I would love to hear from readers what has worked or not for them in having remote engineers or a second office.

PS Speaking of hiring engineers, Ziggeo is also looking for engineering summer interns.

Summer Internships at Ziggeo

It’s not too late to find a summer internship! In fact, my wife Susan and her co-founder Oliver over at Ziggeo are looking for marketing and sales interns for the summer. So if you know of any students who are looking, please send them their way.  Thanks!