Saturday, January 31, 2015

Return on Collision: The Tony Hsieh Story

Excerpts from “Tony Hsieh Is Building a Startup Paradise in Vegas” by Susan Berfield published December 30, 2014 in Bloomberg Businessweek.

When Hsieh met Ashton Allen, co-founder of Rabbit!, he called it a “serendipitous collision.” That was in 2010, at a conference in Hawaii.

[…]

“We’re maximizing long-term ROC and ROL, return on collisions and return on luck. We’re accelerating serendipity.”

[…]

“We’re starting to understand what opportunities there are that could potentially both generate profitability and also a return on collision,” says Maggie Hsu, who’s focused on business development at the Downtown Project.

[…]

Now there’s a consultant who advises entrepreneurs. His company is called ROCeteer (ROC, as in Return on Collisions).

[…]

Downs says the Downtown Project is considering leasing some unused property to other developers. Hsieh would become a landlord, earning a return on investment if not collision.

[…]

“When we first started, we thought we had to invest a lot in residential, we thought we had to build high-rises or lots of small spaces to get a return on collision,” he tells the executives.

[…]

“Someone like me, I’m out in a collisionable way three or four hours a day, seven days a week. So I’m worth about 1,000 collisionable hours a year.”

[…]

“We did the math on Jake. When he’s here, he’s out about 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 12 weeks a year. So he’s worth 1,000 collisionable hours, too.”

Hsieh began to apply this metric to investments that might not make money for a while. “Say we want 100,000 collisionable hours a year from an investment. That works out to 2.3 hours per square foot per year,” he says, with a slight smile.

[…]

“We’re kind of agnostic about what goes into a space. It’s ‘are you going to yield those collisionable hours?’ If not, we can say no without judging the quality of the idea.”

Determining the number of interactions between people and their value had been Jorgensen’s job. He was the collision scientist, until he was dismissed.

[…]

A recent public document from the Downtown Project says: “Goal: 10 million collisionable hours per year inside the llama footprint.” Llamas are Hsieh’s talisman; the 60 acres he owns roughly form the shape of one.

[…]

The former collision scientist is in an Airstream. Hsieh has one, too.


Sunday, January 04, 2015

The Year of 2014 for Ryan

My 2014 was better than my 2013. Here are some reasons:

Take This Job and Love It
I began 2014 gunning for a full-time job, but to repurpose Hemingway’s quote about bankruptcy, I decided to go freelance gradually, then suddenly. I was a freelance journalist for about a decade, and by the end of that cycle I was exhausted with the lack of money, the solitude, the irregular hours and extremely irregular payment schedule.

Content strategy consulting is a much different beast. There are client meetings, office visits, collaboration sessions and other social elements. And when I need to concentrate, I have the flexibility to work from home. From January to June I was gradually busy, followed by a sudden whoosh of projects and presentations. By the end of it all I was tired, but also a bit smarter and a bit richer.

Along with doing, I was able to augment my brain by reading:

* Why We Fail (Victor Lombardi)
* Service Design (Andy Polaine)
* Exposing the Magic of Design (Jon Kolko)
* The New York Times Innovation Report
* UXPin Guide to Minimum Viable Products

I also attended UX Thursday, the best $100 I’ve ever spent on a conference.

Adventures in Mid-Fi
In June I found a bass player for my indiepalooza cover band. Shortly thereafter I found a drummer. And by November we were sounding pretty darn okay. More importantly, we’d agreed on a name (SubPox). But then we had to switch drummers (amicably) and the mad rush of December happened. But I feel 99% confident we will play live in the spring of 2015.

Along the way I bought a life-changing reverb pedal and a life-affirming delay pedal. Together they cover most of my guitar noodling requirements. Which means I’m only two more pedals away from not buying any more pedals for a very long time.

All The Pretty Pictures (and Pixels too)
* Hearing Richard Turley, Erik Spiekermann and Andrew Zolty talk at Design Thinkers in early November.
* Enjoying Pulse Room by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in a nearly empty Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in July.
* Playing all the indie games at the AGO’s Fancy Videogame Party in February.
* Admiring all the kickass KAWS at This is Not a Toy exhibit (Design Exchange).
* Seeing the work of Tori Foster at Pari Nadimi.
* Experiencing Jacqueries on a warn August evening.
* Nuit Blanche-ing with Between Doors plus Everything and Nothing.
* Touching a bunch of fun stuff at digiPlaySpace in the TIFF Lightbox.
* Loving and not loving the Douglas Coupland exhibit in equal measures at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Word Nerd
* I was Handling Editor for an RRJ feature that won third place from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in the “Specialized Business Press Article” category.
* On June 16 I shared embarrassing moments from my Grade 5 diary at Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids in front of many people at The Garrison. In August my performance was broadcast on CBC radio.
* I wrote about hidden gem Black Mirror for Hazlitt.
* My byline appeared in Applied Arts and Report on Business.
* I volunteered a few times at Story Planet, but it wasn’t until I took part in an Alpha Workshop that I really felt useful. Twenty kids collectively develop a story up to the crisis point and then each writes their own ending. The whole thing takes two hours and somehow it works.
* I went to see Guillaume Morissette read at The Ossington and I’m glad I did.

This Content Isn’t Going to Strategize Itself
As I’m fond of mentioning ad nauseam (because I have SEO-whore tendencies just like everybody else), I organize the Toronto content strategy meetup. This year we were able to get Karen McGrane to give a guest talk. She was very generous with her time and insights and I’m grateful I was able to have dinner with her beforehand.


The Other Stuff
* My friends Graeme and Nadine had a second child in February.
* My friends Adam and Bri got engaged in December.
* My friend Chris threw a delightful house party in January.
* I went to the RC Harris Filtration plant during the February long weekend for an ice-tastic walk.
* I had the “SuperBeautys 2” breakfast special during a 28-hour trip to Montreal in July. It isn’t a great year without one of those.
* I quit Facebook on October 11. I thought it would be a three month absence, but I now think I’ll never return to big blue.
* On April 11 I reached peak Galaga at Get Well with a score of 150,650.
* I finally bought a super-slim Bellroy wallet and it was worth every penny.
* I’m now the sort of person who owns a wheelbarrow.