coming back to what you love

I recently got back from an amazing summer vacation in Europe. While there, I indulged in visiting many art museums including the Uffizi Gallery, which has long been on my bucket list of places to go. Also on that list was the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which inspired me to write this post.

When I was younger, Van Gogh was my favourite artist. Being young and callow, I thought Van Gogh was the epitome of fine art and that having the IKEA-framed posters of his art in my room was oh-so-sophisticated decor. As I actually learned more about art and studied history, my perspective changed to "Van Gogh is so pedestrian" and I was embarrassed to admit otherwise. And now, it feels like I've come full circle. Being at the Van Gogh museum knowing about his life and the story behind his art led me to appreciate the vividness and beauty of his art anew. It wasn't just about his tragic story anymore, but about his passion for art, his method of learning how to paint and the personal growth in his craft. Perhaps there's also a level of maturity (hooray for growing older!) in that my enjoyment of the art doesn't come from some external desire to display knowledge or gain acceptance; it's just that I like it and I know why I like it.

Today, as I work with startups and listen in on pitch meetings, the companies and entrepreneurs that stand out for me the most are the ones that have absorbed this particular feeling. Just because something is popular, it doesn't mean that it's pedestrian. And just because something is unusual, it doesn't mean that it's great. For me, what it really comes down to is whether the founder is somebody who has a deep appreciation of the space in which she or he works, consciously and methodically improves in the craft and demonstrates that growth in the product.

I know it's everywhere but it's still my favourite. :) 

hiring an entrepreneur in residence (republished on LinkedIn)

I've been MIA on an amazing summer vacation these past few weeks so apologies for the delay in posts. However, I did recently publish a post on LinkedIn which I'm resyndicating here. If you enjoyed it, please do share from my blog. Thanks! :)

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Target is one of the most innovative retail companies today. They pioneered high-end designer collaborations at an affordable price, introduced City Target for urbanites and even created an art gallery in NYC.

So why are they hiring three entrepreneurs in residence?

The retailer recently announced the addition of three EIRs for their Innovation Center in San Francisco. While this is a relatively common role at venture firms, it’s a new initiative for companies like Target.  While Target may be known for its retail innovation, they aren’t known for their technical innovations. As shopping becomes increasingly digital and mobile, Target and other retail companies will need to evolve. EIRs are certainly one approach to creating new models in this space. But, what exactly are these EIRs going to do and how can they do it successfully?

As a newly-minted EIR at Redpoint Ventures, here are some things that I’ve learned about myself and the role that might be helpful for Target’s new EIRs.

Know Thyself

Unlike most roles, the EIR usually is a contract with a fixed end date where the end goal is to develop an idea. In such an unstructured role, it’s critical to be introspective both about yourself and the expectations you have of the venture firm that you’re working with. What are the things that you are best at? How will you use that knowledge to further the company in its mission? As an EIR at Target, this becomes even more critical because the role is full time at a public company with a singular commercial focus. Moreover, given that there are three EIR roles, it’s important to know how each person will contribute their unique skills towards new and innovative ideas.

Ignorance Is Your Best Friend

I sit in on as many pitch meetings as feasible. Most of the time, my knowledge of the space is limited so I try to ask questions that help me learn about the company’s products and industry. I’m often googling on the fly so that I have the basic knowledge and then probe into areas where I feel I know as little as possible. Where this turns out to be most valuable is in how people show their knowledge. Entrepreneurs who have a deep understanding of the space engage well at clearly and concisely explaining the building blocks of their company and the inherent decisions in creating them. As an EIR at Target, I think this translates to engaging in all the areas of the company, whether that’s supply chain and warehouse fulfillment or new mobile e-commerce apps.

Find the Pattern

Working with venture firms feels like an intellectual candy shop because there are so many great entrepreneurs doing interesting new things in areas that I never even knew existed. As I’m exposed to new companies on a daily basis, it’s helpful to draw on my own experience in different spaces and find the problems that we both faced. More importantly, understanding the thought process behind the solutions gives me real insight into what strategies can solve problems that at first might look very different. As a result, if I can offer feedback to a startup, it often comes from a seemingly unrelated place. As an EIR at Target, using non-retail experiences can lead to new and compelling ideas for retail solutions.

Last but not least, EIRs can create value in being a relationship bridge internally and externally. As an EIR at a venture firm, this might be an introduction to a new entrepreneur, or a selling point to close an investment. As an EIR at Target, this is all about creating great teams and great products. Finding ways for Target to compete with the Ubers, Slacks and Googles of the world to hire the best engineers, product managers and designers might be the most important thing that anyone can do. Whatever happens, I’m excited to see more companies creating EIR roles and to see how they evolve in the future!

And here it is on LinkedIn Pulse.

if wishes were horses, these products would exist

I spend a lot of time on the internet doing the things that I would otherwise have to do in person. As a result, I've gotten pretty good at finding the right app or website to solve the problem I'm looking for. It's amazing what people have built - some motivated person in the past experienced the problem and generously built a product to solve it for everyone else too. Some fun examples of products like this:

• Pictaculous - generate an appropriate color palette from an image
• smallpdf - compress PDFs into email-able sizes (also, all kinds of useful PDF tools)
• Loungebuddy - find all the lounges in an airport, sorted by cost and terminal location

This week, though, I found myself trying to find information and I couldn't find a way to solve it on the internet. Ultimately, I either hacked my way around it or gave up so I thought it would be interesting to post them here.

1. find a place in between point A and B - several times this week, I wanted to meet friends in SF and other places. I wanted to find something convenient for both of us, and because I was meeting people at different times, I wanted to find a coffee shop, a bar or a restaurant in each of the cases. However, location searches require that you specify a particular location to search around. Instead, I'd love a way that I could say find a bar that is roughly equidistant between two places.
2. multi-city flight search with multiple nearby options - I wanted to book a flight as follows: A -> B -> C -> A. I had fixed points for A and B but C could be anywhere within a large radius. All the major flight searches allow you to do multi-city but you have to specify all the points. What would have been ideal is to specify a region (multiple countries or drawing an area on a map), or even to have a large radius for a nearby flight search (e.g. any major airport within 1000 miles). While Matrix purports to do this, it kept freaking out and not showing anything. Or if I did find something, the prices didn't compare to looking up that exact flight on another flight search engine.
3. best credit card to use to optimize rewards - I love to travel, especially internationally. As a result, one of my larger expenditures is flights and hotels. I also have a few different rewards credit cards (thanks to tips from The Points Guy and One Mile at a Time). Different cards yield different rewards, either because of the hotel affiliation or special free night benefits or additional free amenities (free spa services, food and beverage credits, etc.). They also might have different rewards back to the card in terms of number of miles. I'd love a way to know which card I should use to pay for a specific flight or hotel, based on lowest cost and maximum rewards value.
4. amazon order categorization in personal finance tools - Like most people, Amazon tends to be my first destination for online shopping especially since I have a prime membership. I also am a big user of mint and other personal financial tools to track my spending. I want to be able to see how my Amazon spending breaks down by category. Right now, everything under Amazon gets categorized as Shopping, which makes me feel like I'm a frivolous consumer. Of course, it's not entirely true. While I certainly make the occasional frivolous purchase, I also bought a new faucet to replace my 10 year old faucet that was leaking all over the kitchen. It would be great to hook my Amazon account up to mint so that it could auto-categorize those purchases accurately.

With the possible exception of the first example, I recognize that these products don't exactly have a large market. But hey, a girl can wish, right?

Happy (belated) Canada Day and Happy 4th of July!

saving time, spending money

After I graduated from university, I spent the next few months backpacking around Western Europe. I managed to travel through a good bit of the UK, Belgium, France and Spain before heading back to the states to start working at my first job. I recently came across my journal and pictures from this trip and two thoughts popped into my head: 1) I look so young! and 2) Money was more scarce than time.

Today of course, I find myself in exactly the opposite situation. I, like many other people in the Bay Area, are heavy users of on-demand services. In doing so, we've all made a very conscious decision to prioritize time over money. Since I was in this philosophical mood, I found myself thinking about whether that's a good thing.

I think you could argue both sides but I really believe that time is one of our most precious resources, especially as we grow older. That's why it's so important to consider how we're spending the time that we're saving. Over the last few weeks, I kept a record of what I did with the time that I gained by using these on-demand services. About 50% of the time was spent doing fun stuff (reading, socializing with friends and family, exercising, etc.) and the remaining 50% was spent working.

There's no should in this as far as some ratio that we should aspire to. However, I do think it's really important that we actively consider how we're spending our time. There have been a number of studies on conducted on regret and the elderly; almost universally, the regrets are about how they wish they had used their time differently (and nobody wishes they had worked more).

I'm really grateful that I have the option of getting more of my time back, so my personal goal is to actively try spending that time in a positive and memorable way.

Me being extremely cheerful at the Parc Guell in Barcelona (one of my favourite European cities!)

A wonderful lazy day with friends in the Parc de la Tête d'Or in Lyon.

frequency and immediacy

On-demand startups are prevalent now in every vertical. Whether it's flowers, massages or dried herbs, everything is available within a few taps of the appropriate app on your phone. That feeling when the thing you want is booked within a few minutes of your desire for it really highlights the powerful experience of the on-demand world.

I think we'll continue to see new startups in existing and new verticals that aim to create this on-demand experience. We're still in the early years of this space and a telling statistic will be how many of these companies are still around in the next three years.

Button and The On Demand Economy recently put together a mobile consumer survey, with some particularly interesting findings:

• on a weekly basis, consumers use only 1/4 of all the apps installed on their phone
• with the exception of Uber, 45% or less of people knew any of these apps (in fact, of the apps shown on the list, even I hadn't heard of one of them)
• 85% of users that have ever purchased on mobile do so at least once a week

To me, what this says is that a few apps will quickly float to the top and maintain that level of stickiness. The rest will be relegated off the phone's first screen and quickly forgotten about because they lack one or both of the two critical pillars in the on-demand world.

When it comes to on-demand services, there are two key drivers of success - frequency and immediacy. A successful company either becomes the primary choice for actions which people already take frequently, or it creates frequency where it didn't previously exist (much harder!). 

For example, through introducing UberX, Uber successfully broadened the space of the market and introduced it as an alternative to walking, public transportation and driving yourself. Did it actually make people want to go out more? Maybe. But regardless of whether it changed the absolute number of social interactions, it became a larger percentage of the already existing need for regular transportation.

In a different vein, Airbnb made travel a much more attractive proposition by lowering the prices, encouraging travelers to either stay longer or travel more. An Airbnb study shows that the average San Francisco hotel guest visits for 3.5 days and spends $840, while the average San Francisco Airbnb guest visits for 5.5 days and spends $1,045. While they're spending more overall, on a per-day basis, Airbnb visitors are spending $50 less/day for their experience. Other cities have similar metrics. I would also think that Airbnb availability means people are more willing to travel to multiple places for shorter periods of time (e.g. an overnight stay on a weekend). And overall, there is a large marketplace of travelers who travel around the world throughout the year. 

Time will tell who has long-term viability but looking at the frequency and immediacy factors can provide a quick way to evaluate new startups in this space. 

Links to studies referenced above:

2015 On Demand Economy Mobile Consumer Survey

Airbnb Economic Impact