Join me for my latest obsession: Surprise.

In thinking about Surprise and how it relates to my business and the Web in general, I realize that there’s absolutely not enough surprise on the Web.

How often do you visit a website and get surprised?

Sure there are crazy, silly, surprising videos on YouTube. And those often spread like wildfire. But what about corporate sites? Startup sites? Business sites? News sites? Personal blogs? Is there ever any Surprise there?

Whether it’s with the copywriting, design or something else, where’s the Surprise on the Web?

Turns out, people like surprises. Who’d a thunk it?

Actually, some surprises may anger, disgust, scare or shock people — but that’s a good thing!

And most important for businesses out there: People will pay for surprise.

Andy Nulman is Mr. Surprise. Go read his blog on surprise. But come back, ok? Better yet, stick around here for awhile, but bookmark his blog link in a separate browser window or tab for later enjoyment.

Beyond being a flamboyant, extravagant genius, Mr. Nulman is also an author. His book is Pow! Right Between the Eyes: Profiting from the Power of Surprise. Go buy it. You won’t regret it. In fact, John Cleese (who wrote one of the book’s forewords) spells it out for you, “But this book. Or you will die.”

People buy a lot of stuff. But what’s really interesting is the motivation behind their purchases. Why are people willing to put out their hard-earned cash for something? There are a few reasons, but one of the most important and lesser-appreciated reasons is Surprise. It’s clear that surprise in business is misunderstood, misused and under-utilized.

People will give you their money if you surprise them. And I don’t think enough people realize the value, importance and power of surprise.

Andy Nulman easygoing writing style makes this a fast read. He has some great, hilarious and poignant examples of how companies have successfully used surprise to make money. And in some cases, lots and lots of money. In some cases, companies have built nearly their entire business existence on surprise. Implementing surprise strategies isn’t easy. It’s both a science and an art, and Andy gives you the guidebook on how to do it properly. Think of the book as one giant motivational kick in the pants.

I want to leave you with Andy’s four surprise theories. He writes, …”all you have to keep in mind are the four key theories that permeate just about every action that causes a delight-filled reaction:

1. Everyone’s a Kid in Disneyland: Andy reminds us that surprise brings out the inner-child in all of us. It doesn’t matter who you are, surprise levels the playing field, opens people up and makes everyone (and everything) more accessible.
2. Balls Beat Brains; Balls Beat Budgets: Big marketing dollars and huge budgets don’t guarantee success in the world of surprise. The truth is you need more guts than brains and more guts than money to pull off huge surprise wins. And action beats inaction any day. Action beats endless planning too; sometimes you have to just “go for it”.
3. Little Things Mean a Lot: And while you’re at it, remember that big wins come in small packages. Success surprise marketing campaigns don’t have to be massive projects. People will notice and hugely appreciate small surprises.
4. Sometimes, There is No Reason: It turns out not everyone does need a reason. In business that may be challenging to accept as we always look for practical step-by-step understanding of what we’re doing and why. But surprise doesn’t have to work that way. Sometimes you have to do something, “just because” and it works like a charm.

After reading Andy’s book I want to find ways to create surprise in everything I do. Not just because it’s fun, frivolous and more interesting to think about than most other business endeavors, but because people pay for surprise. And as a businessperson I like people paying me for stuff.

image courtesy of shuttershock.com

We often hear, “Creativity loves constraints.”

The premise is that real creativity, insight and innovation come out of situations that are constrained in some way. Oftentimes it’s a lack of money that forces startups to be smarter, faster and better. But there are a whole host of constraints — time is another big one — that serve as the sparks of success for the best entrepreneurs out there.

But the truth is that true creativity, innovation and success take constraints and blow them right out of the water. F-ck constraints! What happens when you ignore them completely and look beyond them?

That’s exactly what we see in this incredible video of Tina Seelig (Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program) talking about a class she had given where the assignment to the budding entrepreneurs was this: How much money could you make in 2 hours with $5 of seed funding?

She gave each team $5 and 2 hours to make as much money as possible. They had as much time as they wanted to brainstorm, but once they started, they only had 2 hours to generate the results.

And the results are incredible (and hilarious too). The constraints are so severe, you have to believe that most people given this challenge would give up or spend weeks on end trying to come up with the “perfect plan”. The teams that had the most success blew the constraints out of the water. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, so you’ll just have to watch the video below:

A few more interesting tidbits:

1. At least two of the groups actually iterated and pivoted during their 2 hours. Talk about fast iterations! They started down one path, only to discover better ways of going about things after they got started. Genius!
2. There’s no substitute for doing something. That’s clear with the groups that had success. It’s not that they didn’t think about it, plan, brainstorm, etc. (and it’s not clear how much time they worked on “solving the problem” before they started) but it’s their actions that were important. There were no business plans or slide presentations — just action, evaluation and reaction.
3. The teams that succeeded had a very strong sense of what was going on around them. It’s about having an awareness of your surroundings, to pick up on people’s needs, subtleties in the market that others might not recognize. It’s a good reminder that running straight ahead with your head down like a bull charging a red flag isn’t going to give you the perspective you need to succeed.
4. It’s not clear from the video how big the teams were, but in my mind this is the kind of exercise that only works when you have a tight knit group of 3-4 people. Incidentally that’s the size of team I think is best when starting a company. And by “tight knit” I don’t mean these people had to be childhood friends, but their ability to communicate, delegate and work together had to be exceptional.

I’d love to try this challenge with a group of budding entrepreneurs. Maybe with some university students in an entrepreneurship class. Five dollars and two hours — what would you do?

You certainly wouldn’t let the constraints hold you back, right?

…until you’ve actually done it.

If you’re running a startup, or thinking about it, or have an inclination that some day you want to, or you work at one, go read Paul Graham’s latest essay, What Startups Are Really Like.

For me it reads like my “startup autobiography”. He’s publishing a list of “surprises” that he asked Y Combinator members to send him about startup life. Nearly every single one of them is something I’ve experienced. And I can guarantee you that’s the same for most startup founders.

• People can tell you all they want about what it’s like to run a startup (including me!), but until they’ve done so themselves, they really don’t know.
• And on top of that, you won’t really listen anyway – until you’ve jumped in, started a company and you’re off to the races. Then, as you experience these “surprises” you’ll remember what you were once told (or read) about startups, and hopefully benefit from that knowledge.

But you have to experience it to believe it.

Writing a great survey isn’t easy. At first it might seem straightforward, but after banging out a few questions with your favorite survey tool (I use Wufoo most of the time), you start to see the complexity and intricacies involved.

More and more startups are creating surveys as a means of collecting data from early prospects and customers. I’ve seen a few examples of this implemented; there’s a landing page with an email sign-up, and once you’ve converted, a survey pops up. This is a great way of collecting user feedback. But only if the feedback you collect is useful.

Recently I’ve been helping a friend collect data through surveys for a project he’s working on. (Sadly I can’t go into more detail than that, but it’s definitely interesting!) I logged onto Wufoo, created a new survey, and started writing questions. As I looked back at the questions, I asked myself, “What’s the point of each question?”

Good question.

Actually, out of all the questions I wrote (or asked myself in my head) that was the best one. What’s the point?

In reviewing the questions, I wanted to be crystal clear on each one’s objective. It took me a fairly long time re-working the survey before I felt it was ready for action.

I’m far from an expert survey-writer. And below I’ve included a number of great resource links to help you learn more about writing great surveys. But I wanted to share what I’ve learned to-date:

1. Take the necessary time to write a great survey. Don’t rush this step because you’re eager for customer data. And don’t rush this step because you “just know” that all the answers are going to be what you want. Take your time. Do the research. Think things through.
2. Surveys don’t have to be static. Feel free to iterate on your surveys, changing them as you see data coming in, adding / removing / editing questions as appropriate. I wouldn’t take this step lightly, because it could make the analysis more complicated, but don’t assume you nailed the perfect survey right away. And I think it’s reasonable to try A/B testing your surveys too.
3. Focus on actionable data and metrics. You need results that you can actually do something with. There have been some great posts on actionable metrics. I encourage you to read them all.
4. Be strict with yourself. I found when writing surveys it’s easy to let things slide a bit. You throw in a question, even if you’re not sure it’s right. Or you don’t edit the language carefully enough, assuming people will understand questions clearly. You need to be ultra-vigilant. And you need to be unafraid to kill a question completely if it doesn’t meet the proper standards.
5. Don’t worry too much about length. I’ve experimented a bit with various survey lengths, and haven’t found it’s made a huge difference in completion. I suspect this is similar to the debate between long and short landing pages — it’s not the length that matters as much as the quality and effectiveness of the content.
6. Ask tough questions. You have to force yourself to ask tough questions. You can’t be afraid, otherwise you won’t get enough honest, raw and actionable results. The survey.io tool (for very simple but useful customer surveys) asks, How would you feel if you could no longer use the product? That’s a tough question to ask, because you might not like the answer.
7. Stay open-minded to discovery. As I look at the survey results I’ve collected, I’ve noticed that there’s lots to discover that was unintentional. This may not be a great thing, but it’s still interesting. I have a couple of open-ended paragraph-style questions in the surveys and the results are absolutely fascinating. They lead me to think about new ideas, and also make me want to follow up with respondents to dig further. It’s just about staying open-minded to the possibility that you don’t know everything about everything (which is fairly easy in my case!)

I have a lot to learn about writing great surveys. But one thing is certain: You need to recognize the importance of collecting actionable survey metrics, testing surveys and putting a lot of effort into getting them right.

Here are some resources for writing great surveys:

• Qualtrics Blog – They did a 5-week blog series on writing great survey questions. Here are all the links: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
• Survey Design
• Writing a customer satisfaction survey
• 6 easy steps on how to create customer surveys
• Writing objective survey questions
• Online employee and customer surveys — Great line: “If in doubt, throw it out.”

HubSpot recently raised $16M dollars in a new funding round. The total capital they’ve raised to date: $33M. That’s a huge amount of money. Dharmesh Shah, one of HubSpot’s founders isn’t in love with the idea of raising venture capital (but he did it, and explains why too.) He considers himself a bootstrapping guy.

After raising all that money, Dharmesh tweeted:

Startups: Closing a funding round is not value creation. It’s the *opportunity* to create value.

So what’s the deal?

The reality is this:

• Raising capital is extremely hard. So you can’t deny that it’s an achievement, and one that very few startups ever accomplish. And if one of your goals is raising money, you should recognize the success.
• But where startups fall flat on their faces is when they think that getting investment is THE achievement.

It’s not. But it sure is easy to think that way. Someone hands you a big, fat check (sadly they don’t do it with those really big checks that lottery winners get photographed with, although that could be fun!) and tells you to go spend the money.

But as Dharmesh points out, raising money by itself isn’t real value creation. It’s just one of the tools in your startup toolkit that can be useful. And as much as startups say, “We know this is just the beginning…” it’s clear that there’s an obsessive focus on the importance (some say necessity) of raising capital, and once done, an over-indulgent sense of success.

The biggest challenge for any startup isn’t raising money, building a product, acquiring customers, marketing, hiring, etc. It’s focus. Focus is so hard to accomplish for startups – both in terms of what to focus on and how to focus properly. It’s so hard to take a macro-level focus on prioritizing everything that has to be done, and then be able to get into the insane little details as well.

And when everyone obsesses too much about raising capital it enforces a disproportionate amount of focus on the process and need to do so. And that creates a disproportionate sense of success from getting it done (or the opposite if you don’t.)

Too many startups lack market focus. They don’t really understand their target customer and what that customer wants. And that lack of focus kills startups.

It’s easy to look at and define a big market as a single entity – a giant, amoeba-like blob where everything and everyone in it is basically the same. This is an appealing tactic because it looks good in spreadsheets and presentations. Big markets mean lots of customers, lots of revenue and huge success, right? The “1% of a big market” argument becomes even more appealing when you look at a market with a 20,000 foot view. And one of the most common pieces of investor feedback to entrepreneurs (as to why they won’t invest) is that the target market isn’t big enough. So naturally, entrepreneurs want to focus on big markets.

The problem is that once you look inside a big market you find an incredible amount of diversity. You find different types of customers. Different needs. Different pain points.

One obvious way of segmenting is based on the size of the customer. Software companies often do this – focusing on SMBs (small / medium-sized businesses) or Enterprise customers. Mark Suster has a great post where he says that startups should be deer hunters. But even within each of those “target markets” there can be incredible variance.

There are lots of ways to segment a market and focus on specific verticals. What’s important to remember is this:

It’s better to do an insanely kick-ass job for a small group of people than do a so-so job for a lot of people.

• You need to truly understand the differences within your “big market” and why they exist. Rest assured there are differences, and they can be significant. Steve Blank points out that a common mistake people make when giving advice is that all startups are the same
• You’ll need less capital.
• You can launch faster.
• You’ll build a stronger brand.
• You need to succeed (or fail) in a hyper-focused market first, so that you can take those lessons into other areas. With the knowledge gained in the first vertical, you can make smarter decisions about the potential in other verticals.

Ultimately it comes down to lowering risk.

Having a strong market focus reduces risk. It doesn’t guarantee success but it should increase the speed at which you learn, and allow you to stay more agile and pivot more quickly.

Remember: You can’t please everyone all the time, so don’t even try.

photo by rawheadrex

Hiring at startups is hard. Get a handful of startup people in a room and ask them about their biggest challenges and hiring is always at (or near) the top of the list.

Typically startups don’t offer the same salaries and benefits found at larger companies. Some argue that the risk is higher (although I don’t think so). At minimum, there’s a perceived higher risk working at a startup. And in a lot of cases (especially in markets that aren’t as startup-centric), university graduates don’t even realize that startup opportunities exist.

So how can you hire successfully for your startup?

First and foremost it takes work. Sorry, there’s no easy answer. When it’s time to hire for your startup, you need to invest a significant amount of time on it. I’m speaking directly to founders. Don’t delegate the task. Don’t rely exclusively on recruiters. It’s your startup – you find the right people to fit in.

And one of the best ways to improve your odds of finding people is to build a magnet.

Magnets attract things to them. Your startup needs to do the same — but instead of attracting shiny, metal things, it needs to attract an even more previous resource: people.

Get successful enough at turning your startup into a magnet and people will be coming to you for a job. That’s right, people will be asking you to hire them, even if you haven’t posted job openings; people will be referring their friends, recommending your company and more.

And how do you turn your startup into a recruiting magnet?

It really comes down to building buzz. You have to be careful that you don’t get overwhelmed or overly inspired by your own hype (because hype on its own is empty, and hype isn’t an end goal or measure of success) — but it definitely helps. You need local buzz. And it has to be as grassroots as possible, because that’s where the talent is hanging out.

Sidebar:

I’m convinced that in less-than-uber-startup markets like Montreal (and anywhere for that matter, outside of Silicon Valley and Boston) there are a significant number of highly qualified people working in small, unknown companies, just waiting to be plucked out of their boring environments and thrown into startup life. These small companies are breeding grounds for startup employees. For one, these people already recognize some of the benefits working in small companies. Secondly, these small companies are often not gaining any significant momentum, so their employees’ eyes are wandering.

Here are 10 ideas on how you can build local buzz and turn your startup into a recruiting magnet:

1. Attend events. This is obvious. Go to as many relevant events as you can. Even some that don’t seem totally relevant; go to those too. But you have to maximize your attendance…
2. Have your pitch ready. Pitches aren’t just for investors. They’re for candidates too. Actually, you want your pitch ready for pretty much everyone you speak to. You never know when you’re going to speak to someone that knows someone that knows someone that’s a superstar startup person looking for new opportunities.
3. Know the talent. If you’re hiring Ruby on Rails developers, you should have a list of 20 top ones in your area. It’s not hard to find them. Get the list, memorize it and make sure you go out and meet those people. Meet their friends. Get yourself involved with the best talent; even if they’re not ready to jump ship, they might know someone else.
4. Know the competition. I’m not referring to competition for your business, but competition for talent. Who else is hiring? What are they doing? How are they doing it?
5. Sponsor events. Sometimes attendance isn’t enough. Think about sponsoring a local event. Or volunteer and meet the other volunteers.
6. Speak at events. Don’t have the money to sponsor an event? Try and get a speaking gig then. Maybe it’s a pitch event (if it is, pitch at it.) Speaking, in general, is a great way of demonstrating a certain amount of expertise, and building your reputation.
7. It’s not just about the company’s reputation. Companies do have their own brands, but the founders better be damn sure they’re building and promoting their own personal brands as well. A lot of startup employees will base a significant portion of their decision to work for you based on you (and the other founders).
8. Get buzz outside the local area. Sometimes the best way of building buzz within your own city is to build buzz outside your city. Getting written up on relevant blogs, for example, can build up awareness at a local level. Another good idea: Get a guest writing gig on a popular, relevant blog. Promote that yourself, after the fact.
9. Write your own blog. I believe that company founders should be blogging. Again, it comes down to building and promoting of your reputation in order to attract others to you. People naturally want to work with other smart, successful people. So get out there and build that up as quickly as you can.
10. Attract local media. Meet and network with the local reporters. Pitch them stories. Offer to be a source for relevant stories where your expertise might be useful. Soon you’ll be quoted in the newspaper and may have your own feature piece about your startup as well. That’s great press.

I told you it would take work. But honestly, there’s no excuse for not doing this stuff.

Three other key points:

1. Make it easy for people to apply. Don’t go to all the effort to build up buzz around your company and yourself (and other founders) only to realize that no one can find your job postings online, or a way to apply. Make it dead simple and very obvious how people should apply to your company. And I’d think about making the process interesting, fun and unique. That’s just going to add to the buzz around your startup.
2. Referrals are key. Most early employees at a startup are there because of a referral. And most of the time those referrals are one degree away – you know someone that knows the perfect person. But if you don’t have a big network, or you’re looking for someone that’s not a match for your network, you need to think wider. A startup magnet can be so powerful that it gets people through the door via referrals from people you might not even know. It’s possible.
3. Building buzz is good for business too. Building buzz has obvious benefits for your startup beyond recruiting. Just don’t “believe the hype” to the point where you think you’ve won before the game has really started.

Even in a relatively small startup community like Montreal, I’m always surprised at how many startups I don’t know. In some ways I’m pleasantly surprised because it’s an indication of the growing startup community in Montreal. But in other ways I’m disappointed because it means these companies haven’t built up enough local buzz. And I can almost guarantee that as a result of that, they’re not finding the people they need to grow their companies and succeed.

Without top talent you’ll fail. That’s about as close to guaranteed as they come. So if that’s the case, why aren’t you investing more time in recruiting?

Build a startup magnet. Attract the right people. It works.

I’m a fervent believer in the value of cultivating and promoting one’s personal brand. I’ve put a fair amount of thought and effort into my own personal brand and reaped considerable benefits. If you want to advance your career in some way (whether it’s move up the proverbial ladder, get a new job, break away and go freelance, change careers, etc.) you should be investing in the cultivation and promotion of your personal brand as well.

But not everyone gets it. And as such, there are risks.

The main risk is that it (both your personal brand and your efforts at promoting it) is seen as inauthentic.

This is critical to understand. Your personal brand can’t be a fabrication. You’re not attempting to develop a false persona for yourself, even if the Internet gives you the ability to do so from behind a computer screen.

Here are 4 things to remember:

1. You can be brazen. The Internet does afford you the opportunity to be bolder and braver; a lot of people have developed online personalities that are much more adventurous and outgoing than how they act in-person.
2. But don’t lie. Lying to people and to yourself will never work. You might be stretching boundaries online, but if your in-person efforts and reality don’t closely mirror how you project yourself online, you won’t find the same level of real success. You’ll come off as inauthentic.
3. Marketing is OK. Marketing isn’t a dirty word. Marketing yourself is OK. In fact, I recommend it. But a lot of people do consider “marketing” to be a dirty word; they think about irritating commercials online, or advertising that interrupts their day. They think “fake”. All the more reason your personal branding efforts need to be authentic and real.
4. You don’t have to make excuses. If you want something, go get it. That’s pretty much how things work. So you shouldn’t feel bad or ashamed for trying to move forward and succeed.
5. Personal branding isn’t cheesy. I’ll admit that when I say “personal brand” out loud a few times in a conversation it does sound a bit cheesy, but the principles behind developing and cultivating your brand do work. So get past the cheesiness of it.

Recently someone asked me, “Isn’t your personal brand just your reputation? And personal brand is just a new, silly buzzword?”

Not quite. I see your personal brand as an extension of your reputation. And I see you having more influence over your personal brand than over your reputation, in terms of how you promote and cultivate it.

But remember, there is potential to come across as inauthentic, and that can do serious damage.

For some great lessons and information on personal branding check out the book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success by Dan Schawbel.

photo from a2gemma

Product managers are the unsung heroes in startups.

The Wikipedia definition of product management states:

Product management is an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle.

Product management (inbound focused) and product marketing (outbound focused) are different yet complementary efforts with the objective of maximizing sales revenues, market share, and profit margins. The role of product management spans many activities from strategic to tactical and varies based on the organizational structure of the company. Product management can be a function separate on its own or a member of marketing or engineering.

Jacques Murphy goes through the Product Management role in startups very nicely. He says very succinctly: “A Product Manager is like a CEO of the product.”

It’s clear that the product management role in most startups is not filled by a dedicated person. More often than not it’s the CEO or CTO (or one of the founders, if you’re not using official C-level titles) that acts as product manager (even if it’s not explicitly defined that way.)

Not defining the Product Manager role clearly in a startup, and dedicating someone to it as quickly as possible is a mistake.

Niel Robertson talks about this issue as the #1 startup mistake in an interview with TechStars.

Part of the problem is the definition of a Product Manager isn’t totally clear. What do they do? How do they do it? How is it different from the CEO, CTO or founders of the company?

And the second major problem is that most startups don’t think it’s necessary to have a dedicated person in this role.

So what does the Product Manager do?

I encourage you to look through the links provided on this post for much more in-depth summaries of Product Managers and their roles, but here’s a snapshot:

• Translate vision into execution. A lot of startup CEOs are great visionaries but not effective in terms of product execution. Part of this is that a startup CEO is inevitably “distracted” by managing all aspects of the business – including funding, recruiting, operations, marketing and more. Product Managers have to be able to process vision (which often comes in spurts, crazed beer-induced meetings, late night sessions, etc.) into actual product execution.
• Remain insanely disciplined. Product Managers are “NO” people, not “YES” people. They have to be able to say “no” to a lot of people and resist the temptation to add just one more feature.
• Manage people. Product Managers are in charge of the product, but really, they’re in charge of people – developers, designers and even marketers / salespeople. A great product manager has to be comfortable managing people (and all the challenges that come with it.)
• Customer-focused. Product Managers can’t rely exclusively on their gut for making decisions. They have to be customer-focused and have the ability and confidence to get out of the office and speak to customers. This is where a customer development approach is essential.
• Metrics-oriented. Along with being customer-focused and not relying on your gut, the same holds true when it comes to tracking metrics about product performance, usage, etc. And this also includes metrics, analysis and involvement in marketing, sales, conversions, etc.
• Business-driven. Product Managers need to be involved in business-related decisions around the product. A good example is pricing. How should you price your product? Product Managers need to be involved in these discussions and decision-making processes because they’re the ones that are most familiar with the product and opportunities for applying business models, marketing tactics, etc.
• Tech-savvy. I can’t find the link (might have been a tweet), but I read a recommendation that said (paraphrasing), “Product managers should know how to code, and use HTML/CSS at least…” — and I tend to agree. Product managers need to be tech-savvy enough to understand the possibilities and limitations of technology. They have to be able to involve themselves in technical discussions, and make sure the engineers and developers aren’t getting caught in tech-weeds. And the more hands-on a Product Manager can be, the better. This isn’t a role where you sit and manage people from the sidelines; certainly not in a startup.

Ivan Chaliff recommends a number of interesting books that can help product managers in startups (along with some that he feels won’t help.) These include The Art of Product Management: Lessons from a Silicon Valley Innovator and Freakonomics.

Without a doubt the role of Product Manager is essential in a startup. And just as clear is the fact that it’s not a very well-defined role, and not prominent enough early on in a startup’s life.

What do you think? How important is a Product Manager in startup? What makes a great Product Manager?

(found via the great folks at BootupLabs)

Students today are graduating into an environment where jobs are scarce. This advice delivered yesterday by President Obama in his commencement speech at Arizona State University was worthwhile advice for any student of life.

I particularly enjoyed his focus on service to society and the role of entrepreneurs to improve the lives of those around them through innovation.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The full text of his speech can be found here.

The most recent Startup2Startup held last evening featured Steve Blank & Eric Reis.

Steve is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of dot.com success story E.piphany. His book, 4 Steps to Epiphany - Successfull Strategies for Products that Win on Customer Development & Product Strategies is a great resource for anyone thinking about building successful products.

Eric Reis is also a serial entrepreneur and the advocate of the lean startup model. Eric’s blog Startup Lessons Learned should be required reading for any entrepreneur (and frankly at all Engineering & computer science Universities who in Canada do a piss poor job of teaching our graduates anything about building successful products).

Here is the talk from last evening.

Dave continues to be a mitzva machine (Mr. Karma generator) by sharing all the Startup2Startup videos online & broadcasting the event publicly. (Not the first from Dave, which also includes Startonomics, Pirate Metrics for Startups).

I’ve learned a lot from watching Dave. In speaking with him recently, I’m going to be copying some of his examples for events & initiatives we do to support the Canadian entrepreneurial technology scene.

One of the reasons I am a firm believer that it is one of the best times to be an entrepreneur is the incredible amount of freely accessible learning tools at our disposal. When I started my career as an entrepeneur (very early in life) I had to go to the public library to find articles in Byte Magazine that gave me any insight into the early stories of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor and how they started their companies.

There was no attention by the regular business press, no Internet to search, no podcasts, online video or Slideshare to get good information.

It wasn’t until after my first few failures and one success in 1996 that I began to see books written about the experiences of technology entrepreneurs with stories about raising venture capital and the way different companies organized things like product marketing, product management. (Jerry Kaplan’s Startup a Silicon Valley Story was one of the first books of this type).

Any aspiring entrepreneur now has the world of rescources, learning, advisors, blogs and rich information on every aspect of building a company waiting on the other side of the browser. If you have a computer, broadband and an iPod you can literally earn an MBA in startup history, theory & take advantage of more then a billion dollars of mistakes & lessons paid for by other entrepreneurs who are now willing to share what they learned. There is no replacement for hands on experience but most of the entrepreneurs I coach run into the same problems and the answers to how to avoid them are often already out there.

For those interested, Eric Reis is doing an O’Reilly Webcast on How to Build a Lean Startup - A Step by Step Guide Philosophy at 1pm EST today (May 1, 2009). It’s a free webcast, but requires pre-registration.

Here are some interesting facts from the press release,

• With the acquisition of Casero Radialpoint’s customer base includes 20 leading ISPs worldwide with direct access to more than 50 million subscribers. Radialpoint’s addressable subscriber base now includes one in every three broadband connected homes in North America and Western Europe.
• Radialpoint has grown rapidly over the past five years, from 75 to 250 employees, while experiencing an average annual revenue growth rate of 40 percent.
• This year the company is estimating 50 percent annual revenue growth over the previous fiscal year and expects to exceed the $100 million mark in annual revenue within the next two years.
• Radialpoint has been profitable and cash flow positive since 2004, and projects an estimated EBITDA growth rate of 40 percent this year.

It’s been awhile since I wrote about the incredible continued growth at Radialpoint, but if you haven’t been tracking the company here are some other recent events that have occurred,

• In September 2008 (actually a week or so before the economic crash) the company raised $98 million from the private equity firm TA Associates (our friend & Akoha investor John Meeks joined the Radialpoint board)
• In January 2009 Radialpoint acquired Boston based HiWired an award winning PC Support solution.

This is the latest in a series of transactions that Radialpoint has completed becoming one of the fastest growing & largest software companies in Canada.

This latest transaction is also interesting for the following reasons,

• Casero was founded, financed & run by Canadian serial entrepreneurs Kevin Kimsa & Paul Atkinson. This is a great deal for them (congratulations to the entire Casero team). I’m pleased to see Paul joining the board of Radialpoint and the company staying in the hands of a Canadian technology company instead of being sold to a foreign company.
• Kevin & Paul have had a number of startups in Canada and have also been angel investors & coaches for entrepreneurs at Universities such as Waterloo.
• Casero was funded in part by Canadian VCs including ArgoGlobal Capital a fund that Canadian serial entrepreneur, angel investor & venture fund operator Charles Sirois helped establish.

This is one of the best examples of our serial entrepreneurs (from multiple generations of tech & Internet successess in Canada), VCs and fast growing Canadian companies working together to create large Canadian based market leaders.

There have been a lot of discussions on the Canadian startup blogs recently about promoting Canadian success stories & the role of our serial entrepreneurs, angel invesetors and VCs working together to create an ecosystem of success. (See Rick Segals recent run of great Canadian tech posts (1, 2, 3, 4); Chris Arsenault’s CVCA post on our industry being alive & kicking, Startup North’s great coverage of Incubators & Ignition and the debates about the problems with our VC industry and MontrealTechWatch’s recent coverage of the increases in Quebec provincial support of the VC industry and local startup incubators)

I continue to see incredible signs of success at every level of Canada’s technology ecosystem. There are many problems with the global economy, the Canadian innovation sector - but as Radialpoint continues to show, there is a lot of exciting success stories occuring in our own backyard as well.

Radialpoint is just one example - but it happens to be one I’m very familiar with and couldn’t be prouder to be associated with.

I love Twitter and am fascinated by the ecosystem that Evan, Biz and the team at Twitter have created around the popular microblogging service. While many people on the sidelines are obsessed with when Twitter will make money, I see nothing but great opportunities ahead for the Twitter team. (Disclosure: I’m an investor in Identi.ca - an open source microblogging service.)

Twitter is also undeniably the hottest startup out there today. It’s got plenty of money, and more mainstream press than any startup has received in a very, very long time. The times I’ve met Evan I’ve been impressed with his ability to stay out of the echo chamber that surrounds the popular service (As an entrepreneur Evan’s got class).

My affection for Twitter is also the source of my concerns for the Twitter team as I saw the signs of fail whales to come on their recruiting page.

Let me explain. During the last Internet boom & crash I was the CEO of Zero-Knowledge Systems, a company that was also a media darling with tons of money and attention to go with it. Like Twitter we defied the trends in the industry when we raised $22 million at record valuations nine months after the dot com crash had begun to sweep through the tech industry. (This was after having just raised $25 million the year before. Unlike Twitter we did not have a successful product and it took us a number of years to turn the company into the success it is today.)

Throughout 1998-2002 we had employees from around the world desperately trying to join the company to be part of our dot.com dream. One of the many mistakes we made was hiring too quickly as our staff rolls grew to over 200 people.

The Problems with Twitter’s Recruiting Drive

Twitter no doubt needs to hire. Here’s Twitter’s career site: http://twitter.com/jobs

Twitter has almost 15 open positions listed which according to reported numbers would be a 35% increase in their current headcount.

Despite their ability to recruit people like high profile people from the Google campus Twitter falls far behind its Mountain View rival for talent in a critical aspect of HR: employment branding.

Google has a long history of strong employment branding. They’ve won awards for being a top employer, and received plenty of press – not just for the lavish perks, but also for the way they recruit. Google may have many problems inside the Googleplex (crazy cash flow hides many problems), but their attention to advertising what it takes to be hired by them has served them well as they grew.

Google’s attention to its employer brand started very early on, and has been pervasive throughout its growth. Even as the most popular darling of the Internet world, it remained focused on its brand – a rigorous recruiting process, lots of perks, unique value proposition and only hiring the absolute best.

So what about Twitter?

As one of the hottest startups in the Valley hiring while unemployment rates continue to rise Twitter needs to be vigilant about guarding their culture. To do this they need a concerted effort to ensure only the best candidates enter their hiring funnel.

Despite this attention in the middle of an economic downturn Twitter appears to have a lack of any focus on employment branding.

Some might argue that given Twitter’s popularity they don’t need to focus on their employment brand; they don’t need to promote their internal culture more effectively and focus on publicly attracting the best. I’m sure Twitter wants to hire the best (and has the dollars and buzz to help them do so), but it takes a more concerted, ongoing effort. Just look at Google…

Much of a company’s public-facing employer brand starts with its career site. (Disclaimer: I’m an investor and co-Founder of Standout Jobs - http://standoutjobs.com - which helps companies with their career sites and recruitment. But this post isn’t about vendor selection or products as much as it’s about the importance of strong employer branding and developing a rigorous culture of recruiting.)

Although Twitter’s made some effort to include cultural content on the site, it’s lacking. As much as I think I know what it’s like to work at Twitter, or I can imagine it, I don’t really get the picture I want from their site. They don’t even provide a roll up of recent tweets from their employees like Zappos & employee culture genius Tony Hsieh does.

Worst still, are the job descriptions they use. They’re about as generic as job descriptions come looking like they were haphazardly copied from some other boring job advertisement on some average job board.

If you look at the job posting for Product Manager or Software Engineer (arguably two of the most important roles in a software company) there is nothing there that discourages anyone with the minimum requirements from throwing their hat in the ring. The amount of investment that goes into a unique & specific job description tells candidates how important you take finding the best fit. When you copy a weak job description you send the signal that you are too busy to take hiring seriously.

As important as the cultural information and the job descriptions is the need for more information on the recruitment process and what Twitter wants to see from applicants. One of the goals with this kind of information is to help job seekers self-select. I’m sure Twitter doesn’t have a problem getting a large volume of applications, but quality is another story. Allowing applicants to self-select by making sure they understand more about the recruitment process and expectations can help weed people out before they even apply.

Compare the Twitter job descriptions with the job descriptions I recently posted for a UX Designer for my company Akoha. Another great exampleis the job description that my friend Alistair Croll listed for a Program Manager. In both cases candidates have a clear picture of what will be expected of them, hopefully a sense of the companies mission and most importantly a number of explicit requirements that allow candidates to self-select whether they believe they are qualified for the role.

Twitter has changed the way many of us communicate on a daily basis. You can pack so much into 140 characters. And yet, the Twitter application process is multiple steps and driven almost exclusively by a person’s resume. Boring. Twitter can’t be hiring based off resumes, I’m sure they’re looking for so much more, and yet that’s not reflected in the application process. There’s so much opportunity for creativity when it comes to recruiting, but too few companies – Twitter included – take advantage. And it’s not enough to rely on their own popularity to attract the best, they need to publicly cultivate and promote a strong employer brand that’s pervasive through everything they do.

Hiring your next fail whale.

I’m sure that Twitter can’t keep up with the volume of applicants attempting to get in on the ground floor of the company. With the only requirement to apply being a resume and basic qualifications there may be a few incredible candidates in their funnel, but I’m sure for the hiring team it is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Having set the bar so low publicly puts all the burden on Twitter to screen and find the best candidates. Many candidates will probably never get a call back or hear from the company (In my test attempt to apply I didn’t even get an automated thank you email, one of the most frustrating experiences for candidates applying into a black hole)

This overflow of candidates means that Twitter will,

• Spend too much time reviewing mountains of candidate applications using resumes as the way to screen candidates.
• Miss potentially great candidates who get lost in the noise and are not elevated to the top of the hiring pool by the hiring process.
• Invest too much of their teams time on 2nd tier candidates who can write fancy resumes and may have been in the vicinity of success instead of the creators of it.
• Stretch out hiring time frames which makes topgrading a difficult exercise since candidates cannot be ranked during a constrained timeframe allowing you to pick the best.
• Reduce the amount of time you can spend assessing cultural fit in your interview process.
• Start to make compromises on hiring candidates as the time to fill critical positions continues to increase.
• Increase the chance that a few bad apples will enter the company at a critical time.

While the momentum of Twitter may seem unstoppable, I know first hand how quick a few bad hires can contribute to a company losing its way. Many of the worst mistakes I’ve made in my career can be traced to making compromises in my hiring practices.

At a time when Twitter needs to be accelerating to fulfill their potential their public hiring practices seem to be indications of future fail whales to come.

A great example of hiring practices is how my friend Andy Nulman screens candidates read this interview or this great story of his hiring practices.

Our community has a number of speakers, attendees & company presentations occurring at:

• SXSW Interactive in Austin (March 13-17)
• Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (March 23-27)
• Web 2.0 Expo (March 31-April 3)

Conferences give us a great chance to network with many of our industry counterparts from around the world. They also provide us a chance to meet members of our local community that we may not have connected with while in Montreal. Meeting your local counterparts at these events allow us to help support each other in many ways while we are stateside. Whether you are looking for a job, trying to recruit for a position, inviting people to listen to your session talk or need help trying to meet that critical investor/partner/speaker or guru your local community might be able to help you get more out of your conference experience.

If you are planning on attending any of these conferences this year please send a tweet using the conference hash tag & #MTL to introduce yourselves including who you are, which company you are with (if any) and any information about meetups, promotions, presentations or help you need to get the most out of your trips.

• #SXSW #MTL Example: @georgefavvas CEO of @smarthippo is at #SXSW #MTL this week where SmartHippo is going to be doing a fun promotion.
• #GDC #MTL Example: @austinhill from @akoha #MTL is doing a keynote at #GDC Serious Game Summit
• #Web2Expo #MTL Example: @acroll @seanpower Authors of new O’Reilly book on Watching Websites are speaking at #Web2Expo #mtl

This will allow other Canadian & Montreal tech community members to reach out, introduce themselves and hopefully lend a helping hand to each other for any specific things you are trying to get done. It also allows those of us not attending events to keep an eye on your tweets from Montreal.

If this picks with with other cities such as #Tdot (Toronto), #Van (Vancouver), #Cal (Calgary), #Ott (Ottawa) or #CAN (Canada) you can use these links to track the Canadian tech community at these conferences. Expat Canadians are also welcome to grab the #CAN tag to join in on the fun.

Update: As Boris Mann suggests in the comment below, there are more often used Twitter hash tags for other cities. The tags he suggests are YVR (Vancouver), YYZ (Toronto). The round up links haven’t been updated for this, but if you are using Tweetdeck you should find it easy to create a search that includes a number of the variants on city hash tags.

• #SXSW - Full Canadian City round up
• #GDC - Full Canadian City round up
• #Web2Expo - Full Canadian City round up

At the very least we can co-ordinate meeting up for drinks to showcase our drinking prowess to our industry counterparts around the world

A great example of how technology is allowing our storytellers the ability to create our own view of reality.

Suggestions for Google,

• I’m sure this is being considered, but vanity URLs optimized for SEO would be great. Instead of http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/100761717775559459217 I’d like to see the profile url be customized like LinkedIn allows (e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/in/austinhill)
• Consider auto-suggesting discoverable links to other profiles. I’ve already linked my FriendFeed account, blog & twitter to various other parts of my online public profiles. If Google wants to be the ‘One profile to rule them all’ it should consider using it’s indexing power to take some of the custom links I’ve added and detect links to my other profiles and suggest them to me as profiles to link to this one. (For instance, I still haven’t added my Friendfeed, Flickr or Last.Fm accounts. There are many others….)

Update: I added my Friendfeed account and discovered that Google does detect & suggest other links to add to my profile. Since Google has a much larger audience then Friendfeed, they might consider extending this functionality for users without Friendfeed.

• Provide the user with a clearer explanation of the benefits of setting up a Google Profile. I know that Google likes to sneak features & products into their mix of offerings early, but there isn’t a clear user value proposition associated with Google Profile. I happened upon it while doing something else in my Google account and because I’m promiscuous with use of online profiles I decided to give it a try. Users should understand what they gain, exchange & how the profiles might be used in conjunction with other Google products.
• Allow me to enter Tags associated with my profile. This could be a powerful way of creating, discovering other Google Profile.

I hadn’t planned on posting an updated guide of TEDsters & Twitter this year since I assumed that most people would be using http://search.twitter.com to track #TED, TED or TED2009 keywords to track the conversation.

After seeing the recent spike in search traffic to last years Twitter TED guide, I’ve decided to update the list of people I know are Twittering the TED conference this year. Some of these people are posting more often then others and many are not including the #TED hashtag.

I hope this will also allow TEDsters to connect with each other, since many of us may not have had the chance to exchange Twitter names. It might help us know who are the Tweeters in our neighborhood.

If you’ve been left of the list and are Twittering at the TED conference, leave a comment with your Twitter username or just @austinhill me on Twitter.

TED Twitter Accounts & TED Staff

• Official TED 2009 Converage

• Chris Anderson, TED Curator

• TED Palm Springs

• Tom Rielly, TED Comedian, TED Fellows Organizer

• TED Talks Updates

• June Cohen TED Conference

Great live TED Twitter Coverage

• Loic LeMeur (Seesmic, LeWeb)

• Maria Popova (Digital Anthropologist)

• Tara Hunt (Author, Community & Whuffie junkie, Akoha power player

• Helen Walters (Editor Innovation & Design, NewBusinessweek)

• Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media founder, blogger, Web rationalist & futurists)

• Leigh Ferreira (Change maker)

• Sören Stamer (CEO CoreMedia)

• Laurel Touby (MediaBistro Founder/Entrepreneur)

• Jennifer 8. Lee (Author, Blogger)

• Roseann Higgins (Founder Entrepreneurs Forum, Writer)

• Remo Giuffre (Merchant/Thinker, Founder Remo Store)

• Rod Beckstrom (Author, CEO, Starfish & Spider, Director of Homeland Security National Cyber Security Center)

• Evan Williams (Mr. Twitter)

• Garr Reynolds (Author, PresentationZen guru)

• Erik Hersman (Dir. of Ops Ushahidi, TED U speaker)

• Juliana Rotich (Kenyan blogger, Renewable Energy)

• Mark Gibson (Optimist Gibson Consulting)

• Hamid Shojaee (CEO Axosoft)

• Eric Grant (blogger, futurist)

• Jason Sack (User Experience Designer)

• Ben Thoma (Art Director)

• Michael Silverton (TED associate, watching remote but great tweet coverage)

• Patrick Kearney (VP Tech & Ops at Participant Media)

• George Brett (Techno Artiste)

• Nilofer Merchant (CEO Rubicon)

• Amy Leaman(Designer; The Movement; Toronto)

• Ash Donaldson (Humane Experience Designer)

• Sandro Farina (Tech Director Tunde SRL)

TED attendees twittering about the conference
In no particular order

• Alex Eberts (Akoha co-founder, my Partner)

• Harlene Weijs (Akoha Taskrobat, Artist)

• Anand Agarawala (Former TED speaker, Founder of Bumptop)

• Maria Giudice (Founder HotStudio Design Humanist)

• Pierre Omidyar (Ebay & Omidyar Foundation)

• Tony, CEO Zappos

• Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC, Angel Investor)

• Paul Kedrosky (Investor, Finance & Charts guru)

• David Hornik (VC,Lobby Organizer)

• Josh Kopelman (First Round Capital)

• Rob Hayes (First Round Capital)

• Robert Goldberg (Investor/VC)

• Michael Parekh (Tech Investor, Blogger)

• Steven Levy (Author, Reporter, Person who found Einstein’s brain)

• Lars Hinrichs (Entrepreneur, Founder XING)

• Sarah Jones (TED 2009 Speaker, Tony winning performer)

• Steve Rosenbaum (Magnify CEO)

• Christopher Herot (Entrepreneur)

• Bill Holsinger-Robinson (COO Spout)

• Tara (OnePinkTee)

• Josh Spear (Digital Marketing, Blogger, New Media)

• Jim Stolze (Happiness guru)

• John Hodgman (Mr. PC guy in Apple ads)

• Susan Bratton (Podcast Published - Personal Life Media)

• PeterMe

• Sean Gourley (TEDfellow, Analysis of the Mathematics of Wars)

• KoKoe2 Great coverage of TED

• Patricia Amaya (Director, Writer, Producer)

• Daniel Kraft (Inventor, Doctor, Scientist, TED2009 speaker)

• Danny Sullivan (Search guru, Blogger)

• Padmasree

• Mark Yturralde (ComicCon Board member, Amazing Race contestant)

• MadLOLScientist MadLOL informed me he isn’t here, just retweeting

• Kluster (Crowdsourcing team, TED contributors)

• Tony Robbins (Inspiration Guru, Past TED Speaker)

• Jimmy Guterman (MIT Sloan Author, Writer) - Lots of TED2009 Blog Coverage

• Cameron Sinclair (Founder Architecture for Humanity, TED Prize Winner)

• Hugo Schotman (User Experience Architect)

• David Hoffman (Storyteller, Videographer, Communicator)

• David Geller (Founder EyeJot)

• Kyra Guant (Speaker, Songwriter, Merriam Prize Winner)

• Yuri van Geest (Blogging, Media, Mobile)

• Kevin Rose (Digg Founder)

• Al Gore (Former VP, Current.TV, former TED Speaker, Nobel Prize Winner)

• Chris Sacca (Angel Investor, Startup Coach, ex.Google)

• DK Matai (Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Engineer)

• Wil Shipley (Delicious Library CEO/Programmer)

• Zem Joaquin (Eco Fabulous Writer)

• Minky Worden (Human Rights Watch)

New Additions Feb 6th 1:52pm PST

• Amir Bahadori (Microsoft)

• Peter Diamandis (X-Prize founder, ZeroGravity Flights, Singularity University, former TED speaker)

TED PalmSpings Attendees & Coverage

• Andre Lee (Corporate Coach, Blogger)

• Stephen Collins (Blogger, also seeding Akoha in Australia for us)

• Aaron Tang (Designer)

• Diego Leal (Blogger, Geek, World Changing)

• Mattias Ask (Open Causes)

• Steve Hanson (Hanson Backstage Digital Agency)

• Traci Fenton (CEO WorldBlu)

• Jane Samson (Sewing & So)

• Robert Agouri

• Dominique Jaurola

Great Blog Coverage

• EthanZ on Twitter - Ethan Zuckerman Global Voices, more blogging then twitter. Great constant blog coverage.

This is some video that my friend Loic LeMeur and I happened to grab from two different perspectives.

This is the video that Loic was filming at the time. It includes an interview with the team from Mission Motors. Very cool motorcyle I want one.

I moved my blog to: http://macournoyer.com/blog.

New feed is at http://macournoyer.com/blog.atom

I know, I’m asking a lot… But I guarantee you’ll have a lot more fun if you update your feed to point to my new blog.

kthxbai

Thin 1.0, codename That’s What She Said, is out!

gem install thin

1.0, OMGWTFBBQ!

Yes 1.0! That doesn’t mean it’s bug free or anything. But, it does mean that it’s been running on a number of servers and no show stopper bugs have been found since a while.

Special thanks to…

A lot of people have helped me achieve this milestone. I’m very proud to say that Thin is no longer my project, but the collaborative work of many bright people.

Here they are. If you like Thin or if it helped you in any way, please take a couple minutes and recommend them.
(If you contributed to Thin in any way and are not on the list, that’s an error so please let me know!)

• Aman Gupta
• Francis Cianfrocca
• thronedrk
• Kent Sibilev
• Ezra Zygmuntowicz
• Matt Todd
• Evan Weaver
• Wayne Seguin
• Kevin Williams
• James Gollick
• Gary Haran
• Gump
• Chad Nantais
• Wincent Colaiuta
• Chu Yeow
• Blake Mizerany
• Pedro Belo
• Dan Kubb
• Michael S. Klishin
• Ricardo Chimal
• Mark Bates
• Hellekin Wolf
• Jason May

Also thanks to everyone who’ve taken the risk to run Thin on their website.

I’ll be presenting Rack this Tuesday at the first Montreal Against Rails (the non-Rails meeting).

I’ll show how to use Rack and then I’d like to try something new (and probably crazy-stupid). Building a web framework with Rack is so easy, I’ll be doing pair programming with anyone from the audience to create our own custom framework live during the presentation (in 30 min). We’ll start with the code posted on RefactorMyCode as the application code, we’ll implement the framework code during the presentation. So submit your ideas there before the event.

To take part in first and biggest Montreal Ruby pair programming session and watch the other cool presentations, make sure to RSVP.

Google Chrome looks cool, ok… But what is even cooler for me is V8, the super JavaScript VM.

JavaScript is a dynamic language, just like Ruby.
You can add stuff to objects at runtime, like Ruby.
It’s object oriented, like Ruby.
It has a GC, like Ruby.
…

What if we could run Ruby on V8?

Well, it’s a lot easier that you think. If you remember a while ago, someone released HotRuby. It runs YARV bytecode in the browser.

So I plugged the 2 together just to see what would happened => rbv8.

It’s fast (sometimes)

I used the script on HotRuby site to benchmark.

sum = ""
50000.times{ |e| sum += e.to_s }

And just for fun, I also wrote it in C:

int main (int argc, char const *argv[])
{ char *str = malloc(sizeof(char) * 238890); char buf[5]; size_t i; for (i = 0; i < 50000; ++i) { sprintf(buf, "%d", i); strcat(str, buf); } return 0;
}

Update: seems like my C code was the suck, thx for some commenters for pointing it out. Here’s a better version which is way faster (thx to Hongli Lai):

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h> int main (int argc, char const *argv[])
{ char *str = malloc(sizeof(char) * 238890); char buf[5]; size_t i; unsigned long last = 0; for (i = 0; i < 50000; ++i) { int len = sprintf(buf, "%d", i); memcpy(str + last, buf, len); last += len; } return 0;
}

Also here’s a Javascript version:

var sum = "";
for (var i = 0; i < 50000; i++) { sum += i.toString();
};

C: 0.017 sec
Javascript: 0.063 sec
rbv8: 0.987 sec
Firefox 3: 3.636 sec
Safari 3: 4.368 sec
Opera 9.50: 4.679 sec
Ruby 1.8.6: 9.565 sec
Ruby 1.9.0: 9.669 sec
Rubinius 0.8.0: 15.576 sec
JRuby 1.1 b1: 42.691 sec

OMG OMG OMG OMG!!! 10 times faster then YARV and faster then C!

Update: Ok… if your replace += w/ <<, YARV beats the Javascript version running on V8, thx to Nobu Nakada for noting this

But wait, don’t go tell your friends yet! It seems, that all the other benchmarks I tried were slower (sometimes by a very wide margin).

But I think this means that the potential is there, it just need to be exploited properly.

Also another fun thing to note, is that if you change Fixnum#times to while i < 50000 in the Ruby code, it becomes a lot slower. No idea why.

Me wants to try

If you wanna try rbv8:
You need Ruby 1.9 installed as `ruby19` and make sure you meet V8 Pre-requisites: http://code.google.com/apis/v8/build.html#pre_reqs.

git clone git://github.com/macournoyer/rbv8.git
cd rbv8
rake
bin/rbv8 sample/concat.rb

Note that this is just a prototype. I just hacked this in an hour to benchmark it. See the README file for what needs to be done next.

>> Object.methods.size
=> 85
>> def i_is_in_ur_Object; "kthxbai" end
=> nil
>> Object.methods.size
=> 86
>> String.new.i_is_in_ur_Object
=> "kthxbai"

Careful what you put in there!

In Ruby, Class is a Module which, like any object, has a class.

>> Class.superclass
=> Module
>> Module.class
=> Class

But the crazy thing is, it’s the complete opposite in the implementation.
(Excerpt from ruby.h)

typedef struct { VALUE super; struct st_table *iv_tbl;
} rb_classext_t; struct RClass { struct RBasic basic; rb_classext_t *ptr; struct st_table *m_tbl; struct st_table *iv_index_tbl;
};
#define RCLASS_IV_TBL(c) (RCLASS(c)->ptr->iv_tbl)
#define RCLASS_M_TBL(c) (RCLASS(c)->m_tbl)
#define RCLASS_SUPER(c) (RCLASS(c)->ptr->super)
#define RCLASS_IV_INDEX_TBL(c) (RCLASS(c)->iv_index_tbl)
#define RMODULE_IV_TBL(m) RCLASS_IV_TBL(m)
#define RMODULE_M_TBL(m) RCLASS_M_TBL(m)
#define RMODULE_SUPER(m) RCLASS_SUPER(m)

We see it gets the instance variable table (RMODULE_IV_TBL) just like it’s a class. Modules are stored in RClass structs.

I know. I’m totally confused too.

You can now follow people on RefactorMyCode.com. Wow it’s like FaceBook + code snippets! Better get your mom an account!

You’ll then have a page with all stuff posted by your new friends and even an Atom feed.

To follow someone, simply go to their profile page and click on “Follow this user”.

Hope you like it!

require "rubygems";require "thin";require"markaby"; class Invisible
HTTP_METHODS =[:get,:post,:head,:put,:delete];attr_reader :request,
:response, :params; def initialize(&block); @actions =[]; @with=[];
@layouts={};@views={};@helpers=Module.new;@app=self; instance_eval(
&block) if block end; def action(method, route, &block); @actions<<
[method.to_s, build_route(@with*"/"+route),block] end;HTTP_METHODS.
each{|m|class_eval "def #{m}(r='/',&b); action('#{m}', r, &b) end"}
def with(route); @with.push(route);yield;@with.pop end; def render(
*args,&block);options=args.last.is_a?(Hash)?args.pop: {};@response.
status=options.delete(:status)||200;layout=@layouts[options.delete(
:layout)||:default];assigns={:request=>request,:response=>response,
:params=>params,:session=>session};content=args.last.is_a?(String)?
args.last : Markaby::Builder.new(assigns,@helpers, &(block||@views[
args.last] )).to_s ; content = Markaby::Builder.new( assigns.merge(
:content => content), @helpers, &layout).to_s if layout; @response.
headers.merge!(options);@response.body=content end;def layout(name=
:default, &block); @layouts[name]=block end; def view(name,&block);
@views[name]=block end; def helpers(&block);@helpers.instance_eval(
&block ) ; instance_eval(&block) end; def session; @request.env[
"rack.session"]end; def use(middleware, *args);@app=middleware.new(
@app,*args) end; def run(*args);Thin::Server.start(@app, *args) end
def call(env); @request = Rack::Request.new(env); @response =Rack::
Response.new; @params = @request.params; if action = recognize(env[
"PATH_INFO"], @params["_method"] ||env["REQUEST_METHOD"]); @params.
merge!(@path_params);action.last.call;@response.finish; else; [404,
{}, "Not found"]; end; end; def self.run(*args,&block);new(&block).
run(*args) end; def self.app;@app||=self.new end;def self.call(env)
@app.call(env) end; private; def build_route(route);pattern= route.
split("/").inject('\/*') { |r, s| r << (s[0] == ?: ? '(\w+)' : s) +
'\/*' } + '\/*';[/^#{pattern}$/i,route.scan(/\:(\w+)/).flatten] end
def recognize(url, method); method =method.to_s.downcase; @actions.
detect do |m,(pattern,keys),_| method==m&&@path_params=match_route(
pattern,keys,url)end;end;def match_route(pattern,keys,url);matches,
params=(url.match(pattern)||return)[1..-1],{};keys.each_with_index{
|key,i| params[key]=matches[i]};params;end;end; def method_missing(
method, *args, &block); ; if Invisible.app .respond_to?(method) ;
Invisible.app. send( method, *args, &block); else; super; end; end

No!

Nick Sieger though us about Jazz, Giles Bowkett got a standing ovation, Zed Shaw sang “Matz can’t patch” and “Don’t fuck Chad’s community”, Geoffrey Grosenbach was wearing a kilt, Hampton Catlin presented Haml for Javascript, Damien Katz made me cry and Tom Preston-Werner is my new hero.

Better reviews

• http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/20/rubyfringe-day-1-notes-part-1/
• http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/20/rubyfringe-day-1-notes-part-2/
• http://globalnerdy.com/2008/07/21/rubyfringe-day-2-notes-part-1/
• http://www.seanr.ca/tech/?p=27
• http://www.seanr.ca/tech/?p=30

Code is at http://github.com/macournoyer/meshu