The 1954 Model – Adventures in Father-Son-Son Fitness

“Dad, you need to start working out,” I pleaded for the seventeenth time.  (Ok, I don’t know exactly how many times I begged..) “I’m in great shape, my weight is 135 pounds, it always has been, always will be,” my father proudly, and predictably responded. “Plus, I brisk walk!”  Per our routine, I rolled my eyes, laughed into the phone, and changed the subject to his and mom’s plan for their trip to India.

Despite his insistence, Dad is not 135 pounds, and he hasn’t been since I was 15 years old.  The real weight on his 5’3″ frame is closer to 148 or 150.  His cholesterol isn’t terribly high, his blood sugar is pretty balanced as well,  and his resting heart rate is freakishly low–like 53 beats a minute low. Dad’s boyish face is his pride, and he takes special pleasure in reminding me of just how young he looks.  And it’s absolutely true, he doesn’t look a day over 46 or 47.  To the extent that you might pay attention to his pot belly to begin with, his big and broad smile make you completely forget that he’s not the healthiest person out there.  Or at least it makes you feel bad to be bothering him at all!

As far as the eyes, and the blood work tell us, he’s borderline unhealthy–so what’s the fuss? Well, if you’re a 28 year old male that admires and adores his father, you want him to be a lean, mean fighting machine.  You don’t want to consistently be saying a version of  ”dad, we have a family history of diabetes and heart disease, stop eating that fried onion….”

Building Junior Roger Federer’s? 

There he his, my father moving backward, almost as if in slow-motion, with racket chopping upwards to give the ball an imprecise but architecturally sound arc.  With an enormous smile on my face, I’m backing up three or four feet behind the baseline, waiting for it to reach my nose so that I can whack it back to him.  My brother, four or five at the time, is cheering us on.  He loves seeing us run back and forth, and we love putting on a show.  He has his own junior tennis racket and he’s swinging it, mimicking our every move.

That was father-son-son fitness in the 90s and we played almost every day.  Dad’s insistence that we play sports–that I take lessons, that Rishi (my kid brother) play soccer–formed the basis not only of our incredibly strong bonds but for the way we live today.

When I look back on running the bases as fast as I could, or chasing tennis balls, or doing very slow (and inelegant?) Hakeem Olajuwon “dream shakes,”  I think I begin to understand the nature of what Dad taught me.  It isn’t passion, or even commitment, it is sheer immersion in the physical world.  And maybe as I type this, that one-ness is more important than ever.

The Brilliant Plan

If you’re incredibly lucky, you can simply drive over to your parent’s house and start a workout program with your dad. If you’re (somewhat) unlucky, you already live at home and so all you have to do is get off the couch! For those of us in between, we’re trying to coach dad with phone calls, videochats, and articles on the benefits of being lean.  Or maybe, you’re like me and you’re using your younger brother’s visits home to create commitment on dad’s part.  No matter, it often still doesn’t work.

Luckily, I was scheduled to go to visit my parents in Saudi Arabia and I let dad know in advance that we were going to create an effective and tough workout.  Ever optimistic and willing, dad was “ready to go the day after you recover from jet lag!”

The town where my parents live is a playground for the active.  Our home is less than 5 minutes walk from a golf course, a soccer field, a 25meter swimming pool, a full gym, and several tennis courts.

But dad basically stopped playing sports.  I couldn’t get him started on a routine that might stop when we were done.  My first instinct was to create a social atmosphere for him but to do that was to rely on the intensity of others. And I suspected that his friends and co-workers were more docile than anything else. What to do?

In the middle of my trip (so many days after the jet lag wore off), we finally got to the business of putting dad on a workout routine.  In Austin, I’ve been experimenting with interval training and I decided to introduce dad to my methods.  ”Dad, we’re going running today.”  My dad got a quizzical look on his face and immediately said “I don’t run, but I’ll do a brisk walk, it is just like running.”  My brother, suspecting that this was about to become a common debate, cut dad off and said “dad, you are running today.”

The fall, winter, and early spring are absolutely gorgeous in Saudi Arabia.  The affectionately cookie-cutter houses gleam in the sun.  The flowers, bold and bright from carefree watering, sway from side to side.  Even the rattle of the bushes makes you feel like you’re in a suburban community outside of San Francisco.  At night, the fake Christmas trees twinkle–if you didn’t pay attention to the walled compounds, you would feel like you were just in America.

Good fortune smiled upon us early.  As we got to the soccer field, my dad noticed my Vibram FiveFingers and started asking me about the benefits of barefoot running.  He had heard me talk about it before but was for the first time actually interested in why I had chosen to wear them.  ”Dad, these Vibram FiveFingers are great, I don’t have back pain anymore, I don’t have knee pain, plus it just feels so good to actually feel the grass, or the dirt, or whatever it is you are running on,” I exclaimed.

Being on the soccer field excited my father.  He kicked off his shoes and said “ok, I’m going to run barefoot first.”  For being in a desert, the grass on this soccer field was particularly lush–even moist.  We stood in the middle of the field and my brother said “dad, let’s sprint, let’s run as fast as we can down this field!”  I joined in, “dad, come on its like a couple hundred feet, let’s just see what we can do.”

Seconds later, my brother took off. Immediately, I started chasing after him.  I’m not sure if my dad laughed, sighed, or had no emotional reaction but next thing I knew I could hear his feet thumping behind us.  I slowed down to let him catch up to me and before I knew it, he had passed me.  I was watching his shirt flail in the wind before I gunned it.

A few moments later, our first sprint was over.  Dad was breathing hard but smiling big.  Sweat coming down his face, I could see the pride in his smile.  Almost immediately, he said “let’s race, but let’s do the entire soccer field this time.”  Needless to say, his joy was not something either my brother or I had predicted.  Instantly, he had turned from the reluctant warrior to the challenged father who wasn’t about to let his kids outrun him.

This time, dad took off, and without giving us any notice! I won’t tell you who ended up winning (hint: my brother runs like a gazelle) but at the end, I knew we had built a fitness habit in him.  As we left the field after 30 minutes of walking and sprinting, my dad laughed and said “this 1954 model still runs, and almost as well as the 1983 and the 1991.”

Tags: family fitness, father and son, getting your dad to workout

Positioning, Analogies, and assimilation for immigrants

RIM positioned the Blackberry as an “interactive pager,” because pagers were something people could understand. While the device was actually was doing email, people understood it as “the pager that you could respond with.” While phrases like “mobile email and packet switching” didn’t mean a thing to RIM’s first customers, the “interactive pager” positioning proved important in attracting early adopters.

via Hubris vs. Humility: The positioning challenge | VentureBeat.

Yesterday, I was at my favorite All-American chain restaurant–the Olive Garden.  Our group was talking about how two of us were particularly adept at arguing by analogy.  The two being picked on, me and one of my good friends, are both immigrants.  We began chatting about why it was that we liked and learned so much through analogy.  Ultimately, we concluded that for immigrants analogies are everything.  Indeed, only through analogies can an immigrant get a good frame of reference for learning a new culture and for assimilating in that new culture.  For an immigrant the cultures which are more prone to analogy are simply friendlier, easier to understand, and ultimately most convenient to adopt as their own.

Which brings us to Research in Motion and the thinking behind their decision to brand the blackberry as an “interactive pager:”

RIM, the Blackberry and its network had more inventions per square inch than most startups. The founders could have easily described the product as “the first packet-switched interactive messaging network.” Or they could have said, “corporate email now seamlessly forwarded from your company’s network to your pocket.” They did none of that.  The founders swallowed their pride and simply introduced the Blackberry as an “interactive pager.” Their board, with no need to prove how smart and creative they were, agreed.

Maybe what makes certain parts of the country so good for immigrants is that the “positioning” of American culture is so heavily reliant on analogy.  We’re at our best when we shelve our pride.  I think Blackberry and their market positioning decisions are a simple example of not only successful business but also an example of how learning and integration by immigrants works.

Publishing companies of the future

What Zynga understood is that you need to go where the consumers are, capture those audiences, build a direct relationship and then diversify channel partners. This is happening in spades now on YouTube as a new generation of viewers is being served up by a new generation of TV production houses that are currently under the radar screen of many people. This will change in the next 2 years.

via The Future of Television & The Digital Living Room | Both Sides of the Table.

Maybe more appropriate is to call these small production houses the media companies of the future.  Think about why media companies have traditionally been bundled–its because being a media company required a lot more than just the ability to create, it also required the ability to distribute.  But not today and not in the future.

Reflections on location-based services

Why do or why should consumers value location-based or “check-in” services?

1. It’s a quick and easy way to meet up with your friends.
2. The game aspect of it is fun.
3. Love knowing what friends are up to and where they are.
4. It’s yet another piece of context for us to use when talking to our friends.  If I know that you were at a great Mexican place yesterday, I can ask you about it and you don’t even have to tell me that you were there.
5. Tangentially, eliminates the “what have you been up to question” so that we can get straight to what is your opinion of X, Y, Z place.  It’s a good place to begin a conversation.
6. Love knowing what complete strangers think of a place.  Plus its cool to know how recent their opinion actually is.  For example, I love telling Gowalla what my favorite food at a restaurant was.
7. Rewards.  There’s little reason why you can’t set up a system that allows restaurants to give rewards to peopel that actually spend money at an establishment.  But its not clear why any electronic rewards program is better than the paper stamp card.  Sure electronic is two-way, so now the business can actually keep up with their customers and vice versa, but seems like a lot of transaction cost.

So, let’s ask a tougher question, why do or why should local businesses love location-based services?  What’s in it for them?

1. Customer feedback.  This is available through Yelp alone but maybe you can learn something about your business if the last 20 people to have been there have raved about the chocolate mousse or complained about the lemon bar.
2. Know your most frequent customers.   Maybe give them rewards based on what they spend, but this requires linking up their purchase history with every specific store.
3. Lure in addiitonal customers with discounts or just by letting them know what you have to offer.
4. Lure in additional customers based on what friends think about your establishment.
5. Lure in additional customers and the friends they have with them, this is what hurricaneparty.com is aiming to do.
6. It could help them build community by advertising events to people that are around the physical location.

A possible new startup “order”

If it’s true that Lean Startups product more output with less input and that the definition for the “big win” hasn’t changed, then there’s only a couple of ways to get big: (1) hope you fund the right startups, or (2) smartly combine startups.

via Welcome to the new startup

Recent events have shown that startups do not need more early-stage capital, they need less.  More and more startups in niche markets show that its possible to actually be profitable and be a relatively new company–a phenomenom that used to be considered rare.  However, the combination of cheaper startup costs and quicker profitability seems to be disappointing the startup community.

This seems to be because there aren’t the big wins that there used to be.  But maybe we need to change our definition of what constitutes a “win” by asking a win for who?

1. A win for an investor that put in $25,000?
2. A win for an investor that put in $500,000 or more?
3. A win for the entrepreneur that hopes to take his one year investment of 90 hour workweeks and cash out at least $5-10 million?
4. A win for newly happy customers?
5. A win for our community because there is a new small business that generates jobs and profit?

Too long we’ve been defining a “win” in the technology startup community as requiring annual return of 5-20x.  But in a business that requires less than $300k to actually generate $1 million or more of annual profitability, couldn’t a “win” be defined by metric #5?

There is a valuable place for small technology companies just as there is a place for small restaurant chains.  The difference is that the latter are less profitable for more investment.  Yet we still consider our local 3-location restaurants to be wins, in fact big wins, for our community.

Maybe instead of inculcating a culture of entrepreneurship that demands $50 million exits, we should be encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs to build innovative and sustainable businesses that generate actual profits.  Maybe the new startup order is actually just a focus on building a business to last not designing a company that’s easy to sell.

Democratizing manufacturing

Ponoko is part of a wider DIY product movement which includes companies like 3D printing service Shapeways or T-shirt maker Threadless where users design and manufacture their own products. This democratization of manufacturing parallels the user-generated content explosion unleashed by content-sharing sites like YouTube. Ponoko users have made 60,000 items to date covering everything from steam-punk couture to furniture.

via Make your own gadget with Ponoko and SparkFun | VentureBeat.

This is probably the most exciting and least reported development in our society.  For the first time, everyone has access to the means of production.  What still remains (and may never change) is the ability to get people to see what you have created.  This is quite possibly the biggest opportunity for empty retail spaces.  What I imagine is small storefronts where independent owners select the best of these products, display them, and sell them to the customer.

This brings the idea of a boutique to an entirely new level, especially if our newest designers give boutiques a commission for what they sell.  Indeed, if I was a designer that used Ponoko to manufacture my products, I would gladly give a boutique a 25 or 30% commission to display my products so that I could actually market and distribute my creations.

This is the only way I can see to practically market these tens of thousands of new items that are being created every day.  Despite its efforts, Etsy still needs an editor or someone that suggests and helps people choose products.  60,000 variations on a wallet is too much for anyone to wade through.  But style-conscious folks should be able to help me make this choice and they should be compensated by the manufacturer / designer for doing so.

Josh Barro on limited government and the mosque “controversy”

Part of supporting limited government is understanding that sometimes, things you don’t like will happen, and the government especially the federal government won’t do anything about it. Getting to do what you want comes at the price of other people getting to do what they want—including build mosques where you’d prefer they didn’t….

There is even a strip club three blocks south of Ground Zero, but nobody seems to have noticed that it is sullying the memory of the place.

via A Very Long Post on Cordoba House – The Agenda – National Review Online.  Thanks to Tyler Cowen for the link.

I’ve yet to read a persuasive argument for why a law-abiding group of Americans ought to be prevented from building a religious house of worship.  If you come across one, please let me know.

Afflictions in the healthcare system

Drug sales are hospitals’ second biggest source of revenue, and many offer incentives that can lead doctors to overprescribe or link doctors’ salaries to the money they generate from prescriptions and costly diagnostic tests. Some pharmaceutical companies offer additional under-the-table inducements for prescribing drugs, doctors and experts say.

via Hospitals Are Battlegrounds of Discontent – NYTimes.com.

Read the entire article, its actually not about the United States, it’s about China.  Although at least this portion applies equally to our healthcare delivery system in the United States.

Tags: china, drugs, healthcare, hospitals, medicine, nytimes

Why Charlie Rangel should defend himself

In an unprecedented 31-minute speech on the House floor done against the advice of lawyers and friends, Rep. Charlie Rangel, attacked head on the allegations against him and the process under which he said he’s suffered unfairly.

via Rangel’s Rant – Swampland – TIME.com.

I won’t comment on Charlie Rangel’s guilt or innocence but I will say that his trial will be an incredibly positive event for the country.  Trials are instructive and cathartic events.  While a plea deal only tells us that an individual did wrong, trials teach us about the systems and processes that created the person’s conduct.   Trials are sunlight on a wound whereas “apologize and resign” is a band-aid.

If Charlie Rangel defends himself, we, the American people, will learn about what goes on in our government and what favors are considered normal.  Through tales of other representatives, we’ll get to judge the normality or abnormality of Rangel’s actions.  Rangel or his witnesses will surely tell us what his colleagues do and we’ll get some insight into what’s tolerated.

There is no question that a trial could be very bad for Democrats, and maybe even Republicans, but that’s probably because the truth will be uncomfortable and maybe even a little shameful.   The lives of powerful politicians come with special privileges and unimagineable burdens.   It is a world that 99% of us know nothing about.  A vigorous Rangel defense is a good way for us to find out.

I ask Charlie Rangel to defend himself as (maybe) his last act of public service.  He may end up teaching all of us a powerful civics lesson that it seems only trials or powerful investigative journalism can bring out.  With the latter largely dead in the popular press, we’ll have to hope that Congressman Rangel chooses to fight.

Tags: 2010 elections, Charlie Rangel, culture, Democratic Party (United States), History, justice, law, politics, trials

Do people want all-purpose?

That said, if Facebook introduces its own check-in service, the companies and investors that have been dominating geolocation to date may be in trouble.

via Facebook tiptoes closer to launching geolocation | VentureBeat.

I’ve often thought about whether consumers want an all-purpose anything.  Do we want one search engine for every type of search?  Google’s dominance suggests the answer is yes.  Do we want one auction site for anything we wish to buy or sell?  Ebay appears to be the dominant player with just a couple of specialty competitors.  How about price quotes, do we want one site where we can get a quote for anything?  The answer on this seems to be pretty clearly no because we have LendingTree for mortgages, uShip for shipping, Cars.com for cars, and many many more.

If we narrow our focus to social networks or how we manage our social relationships, I wonder if we really want to do everything at Facebook, our Wal-Mart of social networks, or if we prefer to go boutique at Gowalla or Foursquare for our check-ins.

The key here is in determining how most people actually use facebook as it is and social check ins as they are.  Facebook’s central bet with starting their own check-in service may be that when you share your location you want to do this for all 1,100 of your friends.  But I’m willing to bet that lots of people will be turned off by this and that they will prefer to circulate to a much smaller group of friends.

At the end of the day, all-purpose solutions in social networks may just come down to whether we prefer intimacy or efficiency.  So far Facebook has made a bundle on efficiently keeping up with your friends.  But close friendships don’t thrive on this type of behavior and I do think that one of the points of check-ins is to enjoy quality time with friends, not just share your location.  Social networking with intimacy as its goal may be the very reason why Facebook shouldn’t create its own services but rather opt to allow–as it has thus far–its users to broadcast their Foursquare location through facebook.

Tags: culture, Facebook, Google, internet philosophy, Online Communities, opportunities, Social network service, startups