BGrey Blog

Good Reminder That Content Is King

Posted on February 16, 2010 by briangrey

My wife and I have started and stopped — and started and stopped again and again — our subscription to Netflix over the last seven or eight years probably more than any family on the planet. It’s nothing against the Netflix crew, they have built a fabulous business and created real convenience.

Our issue is more the fact that we can’t decide whether having a Netflix DVD envelope sit on our kitching counter for a month means we’re actually doing worse than just schlepping down to the local Blockbuster (at least while it’s a Blockbuster and doesn’t get converted in to one of those Taco Bell/KFC hybrids)? But our consumer behavior problems aside, the current fork in the road that confronts Netflix is further proof that disrupting in the content business is hard — or at least really expensive.

Silicon Alley Insider’s Edward Jay Epstein does a nice job comparing the upstart Netflix to the incumbent comparable HBO. As Netflix eyes a migration to the Internet for the next phase in delivering it’s service, it has to contemplate licensing content, essentially a whole new operating expense that isn’t an issue given that it’s original business model is covered by the “first sale doctrine”. On the other hand, as the biggest PPV player in the business, HBO benefits from the fact that it has for years invested in producing its own content (think the Sopranos) and has almost 10x the operating free cash flow of Netflix to go and license additional first run content that can be used to retain viewers.

The story here reminds me of why we moved in to the realm of creating original content during my time at Yahoo! and why we ramped up a team to do the same even more extensively when I was at Fox. Aggregators get squeezed sitting between the content creators and the audience. Sure it’s hard to come up with creative ideas and make hits, but there’s a whole lot more potential upside in it when you do that than trying to make a business around buying up the rights after the fact.

Filed under: DigitalBiz | 2 Comments »

What’s Everyone Buzz-ing About?

Posted on February 11, 2010 by briangrey

This is a risky post I know — mainly because I’m drafting it at 3:23 am PST. But also because I haven’t done all of my homework around Google’s new Buzz product, so I’m probably missing the boat on all the great features it possesses that I am missing out on in my first half hour or so playing around with the product.

Cut me some slack. I decided to dive right in like some old hack user to see how intuitive and down right easy it could be for me to finally have my social network and content all embedded in my all-time favorite Web application: e-mail.

I know it’s early days here, but the experience I’m looking for (in case anyone at Google is listening or reading) is essentially the following:

give me the fully functional “follower” options — let me follow anyone in my gmail contacts list, not just the people Buzz seems to be serving up (which appear to be coming from my Twitter account)…the early execution feels limiting (again, this may just be due to the slow roll out plan Google has implemented with Buzz)

let me have more than a handful of “connected” sites, especially on the blogging front where the WordPress omission is painfully obvious when both blogspot and blogger show up

in fact, while we’re at it, can’t I just get my Google Reader feeds in Gmail, do “shares” that show up in Buzz and as posts on my blog and that are also published in my Twitter account which then auto updates my Facebook status?

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here. I mean if Google wants me to park myself inside Gmail for the rest of my adult Web life, the least they can do is make it an enjoyable trailer park while I’m there, right? Pass me the can of Slim Jim’s will ya!

Filed under: DigitalBiz | Tagged: Google Buzz | Leave a Comment »

Blippy's Great — But It Could Be Better

Posted on January 20, 2010 by briangrey

TechCrunch’s comparison of Blippy to Facebook’s (now defunct) Beacon targeting platform raises the obvious question: is Blippy a good idea or not? Apparently, as the TC post contends, some retailers don’t think letting their consumers share their purchase details online makes for good business.

May those retailers and/or product brands wither away.

Blippy is a great idea. What right-minded retailer or product brand wouldn’t want to see not only in realtime what SKUs consumers are buying, but also what the friends and followers of those consumers are saying and asking about those purchases. Talk about an amazing customer feedback petri dish.

And beyond the CRM and data goldmine, the social commerce opportunity appears to be a trend to watch. Just look through the depth of comments that a typical purchase posting generates on Blippy and imagine how this digital word-of-mouth phenomenon multiplies not just the brand power for retailers and the products they sell, but also the sell through of additional units at no incremental customer acquisition marketing expense.

But let’s face it, these are the basic core user and business dynamics that VCs care about. I’m also interested in some very specific personal level use cases that Blippy can enable. You know, the types of information that are really important to people, such as:

Wife Purchase Tracker — when I enter the family credit card I’m now able to get a realtime update on what my wife is purchasing. What a better way for me to then ping back to the retailers that she buys from to say: “Oh, hi, it turns out we accidently made a purchase from you guys. Turns out we don’t really want to buy those knee high suede boots after all. Please cancel our order. Thanks.” What a helpful family budget management tool you are Blippy!

Dating Profile Tracker — what a better way for the single daters out there to really get to know their friends and acquaintances? Imagine a young lady meets a new guy — let’s call him Rick — on Match.com. His profile is stunning: good education, good job, does charity work — he’s perfect. Or is he? With a simple Blippy integration on Match.com, she then peruses Rick’s purchases on Blippy. Oops, bad idea. Seems that Rick has a penchant for frequenting the local liquor store where, thanks to Blippy, we see that he’s a fan of Wild Turkey and chewing tobacco. Time for the lady to move on from Rick.

Vegas Tracker — now this one could be a real problem for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce who has rebuilt the image of Sin City on the “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas”. Thanks to Blippy, what gets purchased in Vegas can be viewed on Blippy. Man, talk about putting a real damper on party weekends for the jet set. Do spouses really want that level of over-the-shoulder viewing of how many times their significant other stopped by the Cesars sportsbook? Then again, Blippy’s terms of service doesn’t require you to link EVERY one of your credit cards to your Blippy account now does it?

Filed under: DigitalBiz, Life & Times | Tagged: Blippy, Social Commerce | Leave a Comment »

Revisiting My 2009 Goals and Predictions

Posted on January 5, 2010 by briangrey

Before we get too far in to the new decade, I want to circle back on a couple posts I boldly put out there in early 2009.

The first one touted the fact that I had decided to just pick One Resolution for 2009 and that was to lower my weight to 199 lbs by the end of 2009. What I didn’t provide in that original post on December 31, 2008 was my starting weight for my quest. So here are the final stats:

January 1, 2009: 240.0 lbs. (no kidding, it’s like I was a major shareholder in Krispe Kreme)

December 31, 2009: 197.8 lbs.

Net loss for 2009: 42.2 lbs. or 17.6%

And my related goal for 2010? To keep it all off!

As for my Fearless Predictions for 2009, let’s see how I did:

1. The Dow closed above my prediction of 10,092. Not bad considering after my prediction the Dow fell in early March 2009 to mid-6000. I feel that my stock picking prowess may have been used up in 2009, but since the Dow is still down like 25% from it’s October 2007 all-time high, I am going to call the Dow at 11,276 (pretty random I know) for a 2010 close.

2. I was half right on this one, kind of. Microsoft didn’t really “buy” Yahoo! Search, but they did a massive commercial deal that all but puts Yahoo! Search in Redmond’s hands. But my second call about Yahoo! buying AOL didn’t quite materialize, but maybe I’ll roll this one forward and make it a 2010 prediction?

3. Twitter easily blew through the 10 million uniques I predicted for November 2009 (which was by the way a prediction 5 times the 2 million unique visitors Twitter had in November 2008). And my little add on about a whole ecosystem sprouting up to plug in to the Twittersphere seems to have also been on the money. Though I may be a little early on that prediction about a clear revenue model emerging, though at their most recent post-money valuation not sure they are racing to showcase their money printing machine just yet.

4. My call around digital media M&A activity picking up in Q2 as a bit early. Though it really didn’t pick up a ton after that either (my second order prediction). That said, the M&A patient did show some life in the second half of 2009 (thanks Google, Intuit, Adobe, etc.), so I can’t say I totally whiffed on this one.

5. And, as for my all important sports picks for 2009, well let’s just say I kind of got side swiped by the Tiger Woods affair(s). Of the 10 picks I made (not counting the 11th which was my smarty pick for the Kentucky Derby: “a horse), I only got 3 correct: Florida winning the BCS, UNC winning the NCAA Hoops Tourney, and the Lakers winning the NBA title. I came close with the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup (losing to the Penguins) and my Phillies repeating in the World Series (at least they got there again). But I picked Tiger to win 2 Majors and be SI’s Sportsman of the Year. He won zero Majors and it turned out was far from Sportsman of the Year — or Dad/Husband of the Year for that matter.

So for 2010, I feel compelled to make a few more sports picks since I have much to prove based on my 2009 performance. Take these with you next time you go to Vegas:

BCS Champion: Texas (upset over Alabama)

Super Bowl Winner: New Orleans

Daytona 500 Winner: Jimmie Johnson

NCAA Men’s Tourney Winner: Kansas

NCAA Women’s Tourney Winner: Connecticut

Stanley Cup Champion: San Jose Sharks (picking with my heart)

NBA Champion: Lakers repeat

World Series: Red Sox over the Dodgers in 6 games

And how about this one:

Roger Federer and Tiger Woods will combine to win 3 Major tournaments out of the combined 8 that will be played in 2010.

Peace to all in the new decade.

Filed under: Fitness, Life & Times, Sports | Tagged: Weight Loss | Leave a Comment »

Balancing U.S. Exports and Imports with India

Posted on December 21, 2009 by briangrey

I read with great pain the recent Wall Street Journal article touting the growth prospects of a major U.S. corporation that are being driven through exports of its products to India. More on that in a moment, but first I need to set the stage with a comment about the Import side of the U.S. export-import equation with India.

Now I don’t profess to be any kind of expert in the area of H1-B Visas, but I have previously managed employees who were working here in the U.S. on such visas. And I subscribe to the general theory that labor markets should be open so that an efficient flow of resources can exist to help foster new businesses that are based on technologies that require specialized skills from such workers.

That’s a fancy way of saying that if (as is oftentimes the case) there are highly educated and proficient people in India (e.g. say software or Web engineers for example) then I would suggest it’s a good long term growth policy of the U.S. to support a robust H1-B Visa program whereby these accomplished workers help build new companies and jobs for multiple workers beyond the “imported” folks.

Clearly in a time of rising U.S. unemployment this point of view isn’t widely held. With places like Detroit experiencing an unemployment rate north of 50% you’re not going to see the Obama administration vault the H1-B issue to the top of their “to do” list. It’s actually a small victory that Obama’s peeps are taking meetings with officials from India as reported by the Wall Street Journal’s LiveMint reported back in the spring.

Okay, but here’s where the Indian government should be crying for some kind of quid pro quo. Just this week the very same WSJ reported how focused the U.S. company YUM brands is these days to expand its various franchises like KFC and Taco Bell in to India to fuel its long-term growth. Mmmmmm!…Naan bread tacos and curry-fried chicken wings. I’m booking my next trip to Bangalore now!

I’m just saying, if the Indian people are willing to let YUM Brands drop all over their country food full of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil, shouldn’t the U.S. be a bit more giving when it comes to letting highly educated Indian engineers hang out here helping tech start ups grow and prosper.

Hopefully I can find an “expert” to help me properly spice up my Taco Bell Super Gordito with a little basmati rice before their Visa expires?

Filed under: DigitalBiz, Life & Times, Managing | Tagged: H1-B, YUM Brands | Leave a Comment »

And My Pick for the Heisman is…

Posted on December 12, 2009 by briangrey

…Toby Gerhart.

Not because I’m a Pac-10 apologist (whatever that means?). Not because I’m flexing some “the teams in the West get no love” muscles. Not because my wife went to Cal so I’m trying to stir up some marital non-bliss during the Holidays.

Here are my reasons:

1) Stats

The guy has more yards rushing and more touchdowns than the guy from Alabama, the supposed favorite. Further, the big stat I heard this morning that he averaged 200 yards per game against ranked teams was pretty darn impressive. Did Alabama play any ranked teams this year besides Florida (well, ok, they beat Va Tech who finished second in the Coastal division of the ACC and LSU who isn’t the LSU of a couple years ago)?

And my favorite stat about Gerhart: the guy carried a class load of 21 credits this fall during the football season.

2) Baseball

Now I know it doesn’t have any bearing on how the voters will vote, but this is my pick and therefore my criteria. I love the fact that the guy is also a stud on the Stanford baseball team. Sure he plays left field (what, he has a weak throwing arm?!), but he mashes fastballs like he mashes linebackers and defensive backs.

But think about it, rather than going through spring football drills, he’s out playing another sport — yet he still put up bigger numbers than Mr. Ingram.

3) Personal Interaction

Again, this last reason doesn’t carry weight with the “real” voters, but it’s my favorite. Last spring I was a guest in a Stanford Graduate School of Business class that I go to every spring to talk about the confluence of digital media and the sports business. The class is typically for second year MBA students, but this year the instructor (George Foster) opened the class up to upper class undergrads.

In the class sat Toby and one of his teammates from the football team. I could tell he and his pal were a little intimidated being in a class with a bunch of twenty-somethings who were using big time business lingo — you know, “leverage” this and “synergy” that kind of stuff. But near the end of the class Professor Foster called on Toby and his buddy to give their prepared answer to one of the pre-assigned questions. Now I can’t say that I vividly recall how the two Stanford footballers answered the question, but I do recall them being pretty darned buttoned up in what they had prepared. And I was impressed by the follow up questions they asked after I gave them some feedback on their slides.

Listen, as I write this a few hours before the Heisman winner is announced, I am supposing that voters will be swayed by the body of career work put up by Colt McCoy or by the team ranking of Alabama’s Mark Ingram, and that one of those guys will get the hardware. But my vote is with #7 from Stanford.

Oh, and did I mention that I grew up near Portland, Oregon, the home of Ndamukong Suh, another Heisman finalist? I guess that’s enough to make him my second favorite pick this year!

Filed under: Sports | Tagged: College Football, Heisman Trophy | Leave a Comment »

"Coachability" — A Key Ingredient for Success

Posted on December 9, 2009 by briangrey

Anyone who has taken the time to coach a Little League sports team understands the definition of the word “coachability”. Trying to show a kid how to properly throw a pass or swing a bat never sticks the first time — or even the first 20 times in some cases. In some instances, coaching a kid never results in a successful outcome.

In the business world this same challenge appears everyday. Leaders and managers constantly trying to coach their direct reports in various areas: how to work more effectively with others, how to communicate better, how to prioritize and focus more efficiently…the list goes on and on. But as every manager can attest, getting people to make the changes you want can at times be as difficult and frustrating to achieve as getting little Jimmy to learn how to swing that damn bat.

A lot of management thinking and literature swirling around today calls out the notion that people are wired with certain talents and that there is little that can be done to affect change in people if they aren’t blessed with talents. For example, it’s no use trying to get an employee who abhors details to be the top dog in your operations unit.

Okay, in some levels I buy a lot of the “talents” based thinking. I’ve experienced it first hand managing people who just weren’t suited for their roles or who excelled because they were doing jobs that they were really talented in performing.

But I’m not one to think it’s as black & white as just saying all you have to do is match an employee’s talent to the role they should be playing in an organization. What this binary thinking leaves out of the equation is the value of “coachability” — the ability for an individual to actually be coached and to improve in various performance areas as a result of being coached or managed effectively.

Now I’m no psychologist, but here are four ways I’ve found to improve coachability in employees:

1) Use Role Models — Just as in sports, one of the best ways for people to learn and improve their own skills is to point out those abilities in others who they see and work around every day. The power of wanting to emulate skills and talents that others possess is a powerful aspirational force for people.

2) Create an Accountability Culture — Seems pretty obvious why accountability is important, but in the context of fostering better coachability it’s crucial. When people know that they are accountable for delivering results, they become much more receptive to being coached. At least their ears tend to work better!

3) Connect Rewards to Outcomes — Again this seems pretty intuitive, but like #2 it has to be in place in order to ramp up coachability in your people. Organizations that reward employees — e.g. financial compensation or increased responsibility — for measurable outcomes — e.g. closing key deals or shipping a product on time — have a better chance of coaching people towards those outcomes.

4) Be Consistent in Your Coaching — People become coachable by being coached. Too often we expect people (or athletes to continue the sports example) to learn a skill or technique after a single coaching session. In a business environment, the role for the leader/manager is to continually coach. To recognize that it may take 20 lessons for an employee to become a better communicator. Ultimately, it’s when someone is coached and is then successful that they become coachable and attain a level of coachability that can be built upon in the future.

Filed under: Managing | Tagged: Coaching | Leave a Comment »

Give Me My Health Records — Free of Charge!

Posted on November 9, 2009 by briangrey

This isn’t what I’d call the most significant personal horror story related to health care. In fact, in the scheme of such stories, what I had happen this past Friday is pretty tame. However, it does highlight in a small way how screwed up and non customer friendly dealing with health care is even in the context of very simple requests.

My story (or at least the first chapter of the story) is all about trying to get my medical records transferred from my previous primary care physician to my new physician.

The drama began a few weeks ago when I called my old doctor’s office in LA (Pacific Palisades to be exact, in case that adds any color for readers) to inquire about getting my records sent up to SF where I now live so that I could provide some history for my new PCP whom I would be meeting with soon. Of course, I could not speak with anyone live in my former physician’s office in LA — instead I got to wade through their voicemail tree and leave a message asking that somebody call me back to explain how I get my health records. Nobody bothered to call me back.

Fast forward to this past week when I set up my appointment to meet with a new doctor here in SF. My new office emailed me a simple waiver form that I could sign, scan and email a PDF back to the SF office so they could forward to my old LA doctor’s office to get my records. Great, problem solved. So I thought.

On Friday afternoon — a couple days before I was scheduled to meet with my new doctor — a woman from the front desk crew at the LA office called to inform me that in order to get my medical records I had to pay a $35 “administrative fee” to have them copied if I wanted to come in and pick them up. For a total of $45 they would do me the favor of sending them to me in SF. My guess is that they would be arriving via Pony Express?

I couldn’t resist. I just had to call the LA office back to understand how they could justify being charged $45 to get something that would take probably 3 minutes to photocopy and another 3 minutes to fax to my SF doctor’s office (for essentially no charge as part of what I imagine is a flat rate long distance phone plan, but imagine if they had the technology to scan a copy of my medical records and email them to me?).

“How do you justify charging me $35 to get a copy of MY medical records,” I asked the woman on the phone. She informed me it was an “administrative fee” for the time it would take someone in their office to make a copy. By my math that comes to $700 an hour to copy my records. Wow, I think I know where to send my resume for my next job!

“What if I came in to just get my file,” I said — in all seriousness of course. Again, the kind woman on the other end of the line had a quick reply. “We’re not allowed to let patients take the records”. What the hell? I suspect I signed something along the lines of what the medical profession considers a privacy policy that includes some provision that I can’t take the files. Do they need a paper trail for insurance purposes, auditing maybe? Fine I thought, I’ll just go in and get them so I can “go across the street and copy them myself” I said. “Sorry, we aren’t allowed to let the records leave our office”.

At this point I figured this was going nowhere. I thought this might actually be considered one of the “procedures” that a doctor gets paid for by the insurance providers — just like doing an x-ray or performing a blood test. Maybe I need my health plan to call my old LA office to negotiate a price for this service?

So at this point I’m going in to my new doctor here in LA as a clean slate. Thankfully I have my mental faculties so I can theoretically download from my memory the essentials of my medical history for my SF doctor. As far as I’m concerned when it comes to my medical history, my next doctor’s appointment is indeed the “first day of the rest of my life”.

Filed under: Fitness, Life & Times | Tagged: Health-Care, Medical Records | 1 Comment »

Why Gaming is Transforming Before Our Own Eyes

Posted on October 16, 2009 by briangrey

The buzz about Zynga’s current revenue run rate or Playfish’s potential (uh, likely?) sale to EA overshadows the forces that are lining up to change gaming as we know it.

Specifically, the forces that are rapidly changing the biz:

Force 1: Production costs – measured in both dollars and time to market – are falling fast. The hits driven nature of the business is being replaced by an agile product development model, whether the big budget producers like it or not.

Force 2: The gaming OS is moving from client to server – and ultimately to the cloud like all computing. Over time this will erode the console-software cycle that has driven the video gaming business.

Force 3: A third screen – the mobile smart phone – is emerging as a major consumption point for games. The TV screen (via online access of course) will still be a must have experience, but mobile will continue to broaden the reach of gaming.

Force 4: Consumer application of what we think of as “games” will expand well beyond the domain of “gamers”. Areas from brain training to education will utilize games built up on the three forces above to enhance how they engage consumers.

Filed under: DigitalBiz | Tagged: Gaming | 1 Comment »

Willpower is a Scarce Resource

Posted on September 27, 2009 by briangrey

I just figured out why it’s so hard for people to lose weight — and keep it off: Willpower is a scarce resource.

Running across a WebMD article that highlights a study in which it is explained that willpower is a limited resource in all of us and that may explain why it’s so hard for people to exercise on a regular basis — and eat well at the same time. Basically the theory says that if you use your willpower up on something during the day, say for example not eating a donut for breakfast or even plowing through finishing up that marketing report that you are writing, then when it comes to needing some willpower later in the day you’ll be a pushover.

Now there is hope. Apparently, willpower can be trained and improved just like your muscles and cardiovascular system can be improved with time in the gym.

When I think about my own personal willpower stores, I buy this research. I know that psychologically, if I exercise hard in the morning, I’m psychologically more willing to permit a sweet snack to make it in to my mouth later that day. By the same token, a hard day at the office (say a series of intense meetings) can pretty much sap my willingness to hit the elliptical machine at the end of the day.

The WebMD piece has some general “tips” on how to battle this phenomenon on a daily basis — you should do a quick read of the article. My own take is that if you focus on just one aspect like exercise and build it in to your schedule as a #1 priority, in a short amount of time you will indeed build up a good dose of willpower to make sure that you don’t easily pass on getting in your hour at the club.

And the easiest way to do this in my book is to schedule it in to my day no matter what else is on my calendar — and of course, whenever possible, do it first thing in the morning so if you do indeed have a limited amount of willpower, you’re at least using it up on a high priority.

Filed under: Fitness | Tagged: Exercise, WebMD | Leave a Comment »

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