June 30, 2015--Fridays at the Bristol Diner--Not In a Million Years

We were having coffee at the Bristol Diner with our good friend, John.

"Just the other day I reread your blog from last March about an idea you had for a new invention."

"I don't remember that one," I said.

"I thought it was one of your best. Not the invention part but the blog itself." He winked at me. "The one about a universal credit card where people could consolidate all their credit and bank and store cards on one card so they wouldn't have to carry around a fistful of them."

"Now I remember. It's the one about how since I know nothing about computing or IT or anything electronic I ran the idea by a very young friend who builds software to see what he thought."

"Yes. And how he got back to you in less than a day with a whole big long list of things about how there may be something already that does this and that if you want to come up with a viable idea you need to think about what he called pain points."

"Yeah. And then I wrote about how when Rona heard about his response she chimed in and shared her thoughts about how, if I want to think about pain points, I should think about the pain of being left behind by his generation and feeling out of it. Etcetera. Etcetera."

"Out of it indeed. That defines you and . . . me."

To shift the conversation away from the depressing, I said, "On the subject of inventions, I have another one for you."

"Here we go," Rona sighed, now concentrating fully on her coffee.

"When I told you about it the other day," I directed this to Rona, "you thought it was a good idea. Maybe not ready for Shark Tank, but at least decent." She continued to pretend to ignore me.

"So what's this one?" John asked.

"You used to be a house painter, right?" He nodded, thinking back 40 years. "When you first got here." He nodded again. "Well, we had painters around last week to paint our renovated front porch and to do touch-up work on the rest of the house. They primed everything, then put on two coats of paint, and for the decking, stain. They used three different paint colors and then there was the stain."

"And?" John asked, checking his watch. He needed to get to his office.

"So I was thinking, how about inventing and of course patenting a four-in-one paint caddie?"

"A what?"

"A paint caddie. You know, it would be one piece but made up of four separate cups attached to each other and in each one you'd put a little of the three or four paints or stains you're using. It would have a handle for the whole contraption to make it easy to carry around and in each cup you'd also have a paint brush."

I noticed John beginning to smile, thinking I was really onto something.

Feeling excited, I said, "This would save all sorts of time as you moved from place to place to put some gray paint on the lattice, then some white on the trim, and in the third cup you'd put some stain. Etcetera."

His smile had broadened, but this time I noticed a glimmer of skepticism.

"Pretty good, right?" I nonetheless offered hopefully.

"Not in a million years," he finally said, friendly in spite of how he expressed his opinion.

"But wouldn't you as a painter feel that . . . ?"

"Not in a million years," he repeated, this time more full voiced. "That's the opposite of the way painters paint. I mean real painters." I knew that excluded me. By then Rona was in her full glory, egging him on.

But wouldn't . . . ?"

"As I said," he opted not to say again what he had said, but did say, "First of all you'd have to have three or four brushes always sittin' in paint. Not a good thing. And then, more important, real painters," he emphasized that again, "Real painters have their own ways of doing things. We, I mean they take pride in doing things their own way, including being very messy. Have you ever noticed that they wear white coveralls? That's for a reason. They're not into efficiency. They fancy themselves creative types. I could go on, but I have to run."

With that he popped up out of the booth.

"But what about people who are not real painters? Wouldn't this . . ."

"About them I wouldn't know," he said over his shoulder, racing to the door.

"But at least," deflated, I said to Rona, "he liked the idea about the universal credit card."

"Not the idea," Rona enjoyed reminding me, "But how you told the story."

"But at least I gave him a few laughs."

"Not that many," she said.

December 2, 2014--Dumb Phone

I can finally come in from the cold thanks to Anna Wintour and Rihanna.

We sometimes go to places frequented by young people in part to get away from all the serious and tragic things that accrue to people our age. OK, my age. To soak up an alternate view of the world and my place in it. The existentials are working against me and I crave to know what the young people at The Smile are thinking and how they see the trajectory of their lives.

We are viable there, I think, in part because we're eager to listen and learn and because we represent an alternative view for them. They too are searching. So we have something to share.

Like so many of my generation I am fascinated and a little horrified by all the iPhoning. Feeling left out and even excluded, this is one of the things I've been eager to learn about. Why all the young people we know and see on the streets and in cafes are so relentlessly and ubiquitously tethered to their smart phone. What are they up to, sending back and forth, texting even as they step onto the elevator in our building early mornings, while walking up and down Broadway, while having coffee or meals with friends?

I admit to leaning in close on the elevator, looking over shoulders in an attempt to read what's going on on those luminescent screens. Glimpses suggest mindlessness, not anything personally or professional important or urgent.

Part of my alienation is self-imposed. I know my place, my generation.

And I know about the cell phone phone in my pocket.

It's a flip, dumb-phone with no Internet capacity and doesn't even allow me to send simple texts--assuming I ever wanted to. And so I keep it hidden in my pocket as out-of-sight as my young friends seem eager to have their smart-phones on display.

But then I learned from Michael Musto, self-described "night-life chronicler" for the New York Times that very with-it, very cool people such as Anna Wintour, Rihanna, and Scarlett Johansson have been spotted with old clamshell style phones like mine.

So the other day, after assurances by chronicler Musto, at The Smile, having breakfast with a couple of Millennium friends, without feeling dated and old, I put my flip-phone out on the table, side-by-side with their iPhones and, since they are more than with-it, they smiled in recognition of my new-found coolness. Or, more likely, maybe to humor me. They are that nice and compassionate.

I've been wondering about Scarlett and Anna and Rhianna. What's the story with them?

Maybe they don't want to be thought of as smart-phone zombies, the sort I see in my elevator or those in a hypnotic state as they navigate the cyber-Monday crowds on Broadway. Maybe they want to signal that they are too important to be all that accessible--or feel the need to be such--even to each other. To be tethered to a mobile device. Or, for that matter, to anything.

March 3, 2014--Pain Points

I had an idea for a business venture. Since it appears someone is already doing a version of it, I am comfortable sharing it.

I needed vitamins and we went to CVS to buy them. At checkout, I saw Rona struggling to find her Master and CVS cards. I had seen this struggle before in other stores. At Staples, Kmart, and Walmart among others.

This inspired my One Card idea.

Like a universal TV remote control where you can merge various remotes into one--your TV, cable system, DVD player, ROKU, whatever. So you don't have to juggle 3 or 4 of them while watching House of Cards being streamed by Netflix.

One Card would allow you to merge all your credit, debit, and store rewards cards into just one, making a busy life a little simpler. I even had thoughts about how to monitize this. "Monitize" being the current buzz-word for making money.

Since I knew absolutely nothing about the technical issues (or much about business for that matter) I wondered who to ask for a reaction, to assess its uniqueness, feasibility, and how perhaps to proceed.

Rona said, "Think about people we know who are younger than 35. Anyone older than that will not know how to evaluate this much less have the technical knowledge to know if it's doable or what to do next. It's a whole new world out there."

"Don't I know it," I sighed.

"So, who should we ask?"

"I know just who--JE. He's in his 20s, smart as a whip, is working at a software startup doing technical stuff, and has a good head for business. Maybe he'd be willing to help with this."

"Perfect," Rona said.

And so I wrote to him as follows--

JE 

We have a whole lot of credit, debit, and individual store cards from Staples, CVS, Kmart, etc. that are not credit cards per say but give points toward future discounts. So when shopping for vitamins, to pay, Rona has to dig in her pocketbook for two cards--her Master and CVS cards.  

This is not the end of the world, but inconvenient. So, I was thinking, like a universal remote control, do you know of something that already exists to do this--to make it possible for someone to consolidate all these kinds of cards into a single, universal card? I've never come upon the existence of something like this, but what do I know?  

If this is a viable concept, I envision a kiosk kind of thing where someone could swipe all cards of this kind onto a single one. And if this is needed and can be made to work, I can see various ways to monitize this. 

Please let me know what you think. If it is something newish and of interest you, I'd be happy to pass the idea along to you, maybe help figure out how to get it financed, and work as a silent partner with you. 

SZ

Within 24 hours JE wrote back--

SZ 

Everything is going well. I'm starting a contract with a company that builds software for  ____ . 

There is currently a universal credit card called Coin.  You can check out their product, and watch their marketing video here: 

https://onlycoin.com/ 

They had their product crowd funded on KickStarter in November.  This was after a round inside an incubator called Y Combinator.  Anything that gets heavy funding on KickStarter draws a lot of media attention.  Y Combinator is also the most well known and respected incubator in the startup scene. 

Competing with their level of media attention, along with their community acceptance through Y Combinator's nod would be difficult this early on. 

There is also the issue of PCI compliance.  PCI compliance is a "proprietary information security standard for organizations that handle cardholder information for the major debit, credit, prepaid, e-purse, ATM, and POS cards."  It's extremely expensive to get right.
The current CEO of Coin, Kanishk Parashar, is especially well suited for running this particular type of company, because of his prior experience working within PayPal and starting a peer-to-peer mobile payment startup in 2010.  

I'm always opened to hearing new idea, so please feel free to share. 

I find that I'm most attracted to simple ideas, such as automating a specific work flow for a particular industry.  These ideas generally have an easily definable implementation, a simple business model, and a niche market with a strong need. 

For example I've worked for 2 different agencies, who had 4 separate clients asking for the same product.  A content dissemination system for sales aids to pharmaceutical sales reps in the field, which regulated the documents they received by expiration date, region and sales unit. 

If you could think of any pain points that involved heavy coordination, paper shuffling or just a lot of redundancy throughout your career, there could be an awesome, actionable product to be made.  There is an added benefit of you being an industry expert, which makes it much easier to pitch to investors.  Additionally, you can leverage the network you already have, to bring on early adopters who can provide extremely valuable feedback on the way to the product going mainstream within the chosen industry. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

JE

Well, I thought and took a deep breath.

I sent back a quick note thanking him for taking this (and me) so seriously, turning to it so quickly, and blah, blah, blah.

Without acknowledging it I felt as if I was way out of my depth. More honestly diminished by the passage of time and a shift of generations. On the other hand, I've never been thought of as a hotshot even in a field where I was "an industry expert." In small consolation, I said to myself, "Thank you JE for thinking about me in this way. For being so nice to me as if you understand my . . ."

My ego wouldn't allow me to ask for translations of a few things he wrote so I could better understand what he was saying and thereby prepare me for a meaningful back-and-forth with him. 

For example--

"Product crowd"
"Peer-to-peer mobile payment startup"
"Content dissemination system"
"Pain points"

Pain I could understand. I know from pain. But more of the lower back variety than having to do with "incubating" business ideas.

Nor was my bruised ego going to allow me to ask more about KickStarter or Y Combinator. Even Rona, who has an MBA in marketing, had never heard of these and she was at an uncharacteristic loss for words. 

"Combinator?" I muttered.

"I told you, didn't I?" Clearly, Rona was not entirely at a loss for words.

Still deflated, with an edge, I asked, "Didn't you what?"

"Tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"That this is no game for people like you."

"Meaning?"

"It's a young person's world." She was trying to be kind.

"But," I puffed myself up, "My One Card is good enough so that a real hotshot came up with Coin, a stupid name," I said as an aside, "which is just like my idea and good enough to get financing."

"Fair enough," Rona said.

That made me feel a bit better. "But still I don't know from this product crowd business. One thing I'm sure about though--it doesn't have anything to do with a group of people. "

"I love you anyway, and JE too, even if you are older than you'd like to admit and don't know anything about content dissemination systems."

"I too think JE's great."

 "And, in the meantime, industry expert," Rona smiled, "see what you can come up with. JE said he'd love to hear your thoughts."

"About the real thoughts I'm having, I'm not so sure."