All posts by Mark

I’m the founder of The Hawaii Project, a new book discovery engine. Previously I was responsible for Product Strategy and Product Management at Telenav, after they acquired goby. Prior to that I was the ceo of Goby, since acquired by Telenav. Before that I did time at Endeca, PTC, Netezza, Evans & Sutherland in a variety of R&D, professional services and business development roles. When I’m not obsessing over work, I’m a proud husband and father of two great kids, love to play tennis, am a compulsive reader and book collector, and am really into way too many different kinds of music. (What’s with the Viking you might ask? While the vikings were known to split a skull or two, I mean more the verb than the noun, as in “to go adventuring” in the sense of the Old Norse fara í víking. I’ve always been interested in the vikings and started using viking2917 as a handle to avoid spammers way back when, and have just kept using it….)
Books, The Hawaii Project

Whither the eBooks subscription model?

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oysterThe news that Oyster is closing shop (or at least, abandoning their eBooks subscription business) suggests a re-evaluation of the subscription eBook business model is in order.

We’ve written before about the challenges of the subscription model for eBooks. The model has fundamental challenges:

  1. Limited catalog
  2. Poor discovery methods
  3. Proprietary Readers
  4. Competition from Amazon

Because the publishers live off their best-sellers and the subscription business is an all-you-can-eat model, the publishers have been reluctant to add their top titles to Oyster and Scribd. (For example, this article suggests 15% of books account for 80% of sales — if that 15% isn’t well represented in the subscription inventory, users are likely to abandon the service when they can’t find the books they want).

This leads to the second issue. If I can’t find the books I want, that the marketing world has told me I am “supposed” to read (The Girl on the Train, 50 Shades of Grey et. al.), then what am I going to read? I need tools to proactively discover great things to read, that are in the subscription catalog. And the recommendations need to come pro-actively, otherwise I am going to the catalog to read something the NY Times tells me I should read, and when I don’t find it, I get frustrated and leave. Oyster and Scribd aren’t very good at that.

Both Oyster and Scribd use proprietary readers. That’s not a fatal flaw, and the readers are actually quite nice (I particularly like Scribd’s iPad reader — clean, minimalist and easy to use). But it’s one more thing I have to learn, one more bit of friction in a world where I’m already reading on my Kindle, my computer, my phone, my Amazon Fire tablet, downloading eBooks from my library, not to mention physical books. Readers really don’t need another environment to read in. And with Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, the bar to jump over to get a user to subscribe on an ongoing basis to a subscription reading service is just too high.

And that is what Oyster found out, after $17M invested and major partnerships with most of the big publishers.

What might save the day?

Subscription services need to bring more value to readers than just “all you can eat” reading. Bring me things I can’t get anywhere else. Some ideas:

  1. Great books I can only get from you. (Negotiate a deal with 20 major indie authors to write books solely for your platform).
  2. Deliver great news and information about books. I might only read one book every few weeks, but The Martian is coming into theaters and I’d be very interested to read lots of news about that, since I loved the book. I’d love author interviews with my favorite authors, and a Medium-like news feed filled with booky goodness (especially if it was personalized). If Scribd were “organizing” the bookish part of the Internet and bringing me personalized book news every few days, I’d be on the service all the time.
  3. Truly personalized book recommendations. It’s not enough to say, “oh Mark likes Fantasy, let’s recommend The Lord of the Rings (which is what Scribd is doing to me right now). I mean, come on. Give me something interesting! Give me a way to import my Goodreads account so you can see all the books I’ve already read and stop recommending them to me.
  4. Book Clubs. People love to discuss books. Give me a virtual book club environment where I can chat about what I’m reading. Reddit has a vast community interested in books. If a subscription service wants to be sticky, find a way to bind me to a community of book lovers.

The key is, a simple all-you-can-eat reading environment isn’t enough, not at ~$10 a month. If it’s $10 a year, no problem — but that won’t support the publishers.

(btw: at The Hawaii Project we’re tackling #2 and #3, check us out).

Favorites, Vikings

Thomas Del Watkins, II.

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ThomasDelWatkinsMy father passed away last week. This is my eulogy from his service.

Dad was a soldier. He was a husband and a father. He was a teacher, a patriot, and a hero. Those are big words, but I don’t use them lightly. He was a quiet man, but deep and serious, interested in the world of ideas and knowledge and always ready to share his thinking. I had a few stories I wanted to share which you might not have heard before about Dad.

Dad was a teacher by nature, although not by profession – he did come from a family of teachers. His head was an encyclopedia of knowledge about most any topic. If you wanted to know the history of the Federal Reserve Board, or how steel is made, he could tell you. He was also extremely practical and hands on. He taught me how to make furniture by hand, there’s a bookshelf in the house we made together. I would always try to sit down and do it. He told me, “You can’t work sitting down“. Ironic as I make my living sitting down now, but I understood him to mean, “you can’t take shortcuts”.

One day he was changing the oil in the car and listening to the radio (boy did he love his radio), and teaching me how to change the oil. A news story came on, I forget the details but somebody had done something questionable to make millions of dollars. Dad said something that’s stuck with me to this day, he said, “There’s so many people who will sacrifice their principles for a few bucks“. And I knew he didn’t mean a few bucks, he meant millions, but compared to his principles, that’s what it was to him. I didn’t want to be one of those people. He always wanted his children not just to be better off than he was, but more importantly to BE better than he was, and he and my mother were a team in making that happen.

Dad knew that money wasn’t worth your principles, but he was always interested in the theory and practice of money. He was a child of the depression and the war and was extremely frugal. He’d take on the hard jobs in the military because he got paid more and eventually started his own business after retiring from the military. He was always very interested in the investing and the stock market. A few years back we bought him an iPad, and it was like an artifact from the future for him, he could sit in his chair and get instant stock quotes and research, and it was such a joy to watch, I didn’t think I’d ever get an email from him but I did.

dad2

I mentioned Dad was a soldier and a hero. Dad did two tours in Vietnam, was career military, and was awarded numerous commendations. He received the following commendations:

  • Bronze Star with V Device (our nation’s fourth highest award for bravery (Valor) in combat)
  • Purple Heart
  • National Defense Service Medal
  • Parachutist Badge
  • Ranger Tab
  • Combat Infantry Badge
  • Air Medal
  • Meritorious Service Model (2nd oak leaf cluster)
  • Army Commendation Medal (1st Oak Leaf Cluster)
  • Vietnam Service Medal
  • Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal
  • Honor Medal China
  • Republic of Vietnam Staff Service Medal 1st Class
  • Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces Honor Medal 1st class
  • Meritorious Unit Commendation
  • Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm
  • Republic of Vietnam Civil Action Medal First Class
  • Bronze Star (2nd Oak Leaf Cluster)

I’d like to tell you the story of his bronze star and the purple heart.

[Read from newspaper clipping]

bronze star

Like many veterans, Dad didn’t like to talk about anything special he’d done. As he said, “you just do what you have to do and don’t make a big deal out of it.” But we’d sit up late many times, there might have been a drink or two involved, and one night he told me the story. Those of you old enough to remember Paul Harvey the radio guy, he’d say, “And now for the rest of the story”. Dad said, “Here’s the part I never told anybody before”. He said it was SO hot in Vietnam, they’d all sleep completely naked. He said the entire rescue, he didn’t have a thing on except a pair of Army boots. But he’d never wanted to tell to tell that part, but it gives you a sense of what he was capable of.

Dad had a great life, and together with Mom made a great family, and he will be missed.

Books, Startups, The Hawaii Project

William Gibson, Startups and Verbs

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So, I’m reading Distrust That Particular Flavor by William Gibson. In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last 20 years, Gibson is novelist who famously spawned the Cyberpunk movement and coined the term “cyberspace” in Neuromancer, 30 years ago. And gone on to write many thoughtful, wonderful books. While he’s inspired a generation of technologists, he doesn’t focus on startups. But Distrust That Particular Flavor (his only non-fiction book) has some interesting insights on the startup process (it’s packed with non-startupy insights as well!).

Why do serial entrepreneurs do it? Who puts themself through all that pain by choice, knowing the odds are they’ll fail? Gibson, although he’s writing about writing for a living, has the answer, which utterly captures the joy of a piece of working code or a business that’s starting to work:

The distinction I was making wasn’t between paid versus unpaid, exactly. It wasn’t about whatever sum might be involved. It was about a certain demonstration of agency. ….. Either someone whose rent was paid by their job of selecting stories, someone for whom it actually mattered, could be induced by my words on a page to buy my story, or they couldn’t. This seemed like magic to me, and still does. As if the right runes, scratched in the dirt, could produce a bag of groceries. Once you’ve managed to do this successfully, doing it again isn’t quite so much about the groceries as about the peculiar wonder of it.

So if we want to produce that wonder, we need a startup that resonates with people. That they readily associate with your service. I once advised a fellow entrepreneur that he needed to remove all the actions from his startup, except for one button. One key action. The ultimate in clarity for the user. That is what this thing does. Hard to achieve, but the right goal. Gibson has a take on that (this is in 1989, mind you).

A BBC executive working on another vision of interactive television offered me a tour of a small research facility in San Francisco. He was interested in having me ”do” something with this new technology. The lab we visited was devoted to… well, there weren’t verbs. I looked at things, watched consoles as they were poked and prodded, and nobody there, it seemed, could even begin to explain what it was I might be doing if I were to, uh, do, one of these projects, whatever it was. It wasn’t writing, and it wasn’t directing. It was definitely something, though, and they were certainly keen to do it, but they needed those verbs.

You’ve heard it said that startups are a search for a business model. And that’s not a bad way to look at it. But for a consumer startup, ubiquity is all. To become ubiquitous, people need a “verb” for you. Or at least a one word mental construct they associate with you, even if they don’t say it out loud. Google is famously a verb now. Foursquare is “check in”. Pinterest “Pins” things.

What’s your verb?

(btw: The Hawaii Project is demoing at Mass Innovation Nights. If you like what we’re up to, we can use your vote, here: http://buff.ly/1hWR6Ay).

Books, Startups

Being in the Water

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I remember many years ago learning to surf in Hawaii with my daughter. (Well, she learned; me, not so much). We got some instructions on the beach, then, into the water we go. Our instructor pushed us into the waves, and my daughter, a gymnast, popped right up onto the board and was surfing the first time.

I just couldn’t get it. Kept missing the wave, or losing my footing. And getting more and more frustrated and unhappy with each attempt.

At some point, I had the thought: why are you so unhappy? You’re in the water in one of the most beautiful places on earth, the sun is shining and you’re having fun with your kids.

Sometimes, you just have to enjoy “being in the water”, and let go of the immediate need for success. Trust the process.

Going through a bit of that with The Hawaii Project now. The first rush of the launch is off, and while things are going ok, customer acquisition is not going the way I want it to, and attempts to generate press aren’t hitting yet.

Sometimes, you just have to enjoy being in the water. I’m working my dream project, I have the freedom to chase it on my own terms.

Enjoy being in the water. Keep pushing, don’t be satisfied, but enjoy being in the water.

(The Hawaii Project finds great books you’d never find on your own. Check us out: http://www.thehawaiiproject.com)

Books, The Hawaii Project

The Water Knife, by Paolo Bacigalupi

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wThe Water Knife is an extremely interesting near-future, post-apocalyptic take on the water problems faced by the American Southwest.

Angel Velasquez is a Water Knife – a vicious and not-quite-amoral enforcer who helps Catherine Case control the water supply from the Colorado river, on which everyone downriver depends. Lucy Monroe is a Pultizer-nominated investigative journalist poking all the wrong people in Phoenix and California. Maria is a desperately poor migrant who’s made her way to Phoenix. When Angel is sent from Vegas to Phoenix to get his hands on some water rights, their paths collide in a brutal and violent exploration of what people will do to each other because of poverty, desperation,  extreme conditions or just plain evil.

While The Water Knife lays this water shortage at the feet of man’s development and climate change, it turns out this isn’t the first time the Southwest has undergone drought. In fact drought led to the migration and eventual disappearance of the ancient Anasazi, the creators of Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon. That drought created enormous social upheaval, migration and violence (a subject I covered a bit here  and here, including extremely brutal mass killings and cannibalism).

The Water Knife is a great read, no matter your point of view about climate change, urban development or water usage in the California and the southwest. It recalls the best of William Gibson’s cyberpunk masterpiece Neuromancer (is Catherine Case named after Case, the anti-hero of Neuromancer?). It’s an all-too-plausible extrapolation of the challenges facing California (often mis-reported as saying California will be out of water in a year). It’s a classic sci-fi/noir with a Southwestern flair. It’s an exploration of whether mankind is inherently evil, and a reminder that civilization might be a thin veneer over our violent natures. And it’s a fast, enjoyable read.

Bacigalupi’s characters occasional veer a little to close to stereotypes (the bad guy redeemed by a woman, the muckraking journalist), but those are minor quibbles. Great read, and thought provoking.

If you’re wondering what to read next after The Water Knife, head over to this page: http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/what-should-I-read-next-after–The-Water-Knife–46654. And in the non-fiction category, consider Cadillac Desert, a history of water in the southwest which features prominently in The Water Knife.