On Tech, Business, Society.

Tag: user experience

A Critical Perspective on Ethereum: Too Much Tinkering 

The tinkering ratio of output can be improved to yield more mainstream products

I’m writing this critique with a deep and long historical perspective on Ethereum because I want Ethereum to succeed better. I’d like its ecosystem to get stronger. I’d like its apps and services to be more useful. I’d like its end-user experiences to be on par with what the mainstream consumer expects. 

At a time when many other L1 blockchain infrastructures are struggling for growth, Ethereum has a chance to clean up and solidify its position as the preeminent blockchain infrastructure. 

Whether changes happen or not depends to a great extent on what the Ethereum community does or doesn’t do. There is a limit to what the market can do to pick up the pieces and innovate on top of what is handed to them.

This comes at a time when a large part of the Ethereum community is getting ready to re-assemble in Waterloo where the first ETH Global event took place six years ago. I participated in that event, wrote From Waterloo to Zug, Retracing Ethereum’s Journey and made a presentation chronicling the then-emerging Ethereum ecosystem.

I’d like to talk about what Ethereum can do better. So, I’m going to focus on some parts that could be improved, in order to maximize Ethereum’s potential. 

There is no need to extol Ethereum’s strengths, as you all know them. But sometimes your strengths create a weakness. So we can start there. 

One of Ethereum’s strengths is the diversity of its ecosystem and how much development activity there is around it. It is undoubtedly the most vibrant laboratory for blockchain innovation. 

However, that strength has become a weakness because there is too much TINKERING in that ecosystem. 

Tinkering is not bad because it can lead to great things as you iterate. But when I said “too much tinkering”, I meant on a relative basis. 

Tinkering as a ratio of output can be improved. This means that we don’t necessarily need less tinkering, but we need more tinkering that results in fully deployable and usable solutions. And not just at the technical level. We need more end-user applications with user-friendly, mainstream-appeal types of applications.

If your tinkering doesn’t produce an end result, do you know what happens?

Other chains take your half-baked ideas and they add the last mile to it, and they deliver something usable. Sounds familiar?

One of the drawbacks of too much tinkering is that we tend to forget about tuning the end-user experience. 

Of course, the first level of the Ethereum ecosystem is mostly comprised of developers, and that’s a great thing. Developers typically work on infrastructure or they work on services for other developers to build applications on, or they work directly on applications.

The part that needs the most improvement is the last part, the part that touches the end user.

If Ethereum wants to be in the hands of one billion users, it needs to think more about the importance of mainstream user experiences. The mainstream user wants SIMPLICITY first, and two or three clicks to get impressed and hooked. That challenge, by the way, doesn’t only apply to the Ethereum community. It does also matter for the entire blockchain industry. I recently wrote, What The Blockchain Industry Can Learn From the Popularity of Artificial Intelligence pertaining specifically to the user experience.

Here are two related parts where Ethereum can improve.

First, the Ethereum development ecosystem needs more product managers. Product managers focus on getting the product to the market in its most usable form. Sadly, sometimes, they are the ones who realize that at one point, you need to shoot the engineers in order to get the product out. Product managers obsess about the user experience, user flows and user interactions. Product managers understand how to lay out a roadmap and prioritize features rollout accordingly. 

Second, the L2 layers fragmentation is another strength-turned-weakness. L2’s have been undoubtedly beneficial to Ethereum’s scalability, but from a user perspective, the experience is not ideal, because of the switching friction. As a user, imagine if you had to switch browsers to access different parts of the web. It would be unthinkable, yet we ask Ethereum users to decide which L2 to choose from. Furthermore, we make them jump through hoops and take security risks to bridge from one network to another if they seek to move assets across L2’s. 

I don’t have a solution for this fragmentation, and some believe it’s not an issue, but I do think it is. Therefore, I’m just laying out the challenge to elevate its visibility and importance. When there is less friction, there is more adoption.

I realize that the Ethereum ecosystem is obsessed with an extreme form of decentralization at all levels of the stack. But that also creates challenges, because as you unbundle various pieces in order to decentralize the system, you then need to re-bundle everything to properly assemble a solution. Then, you need a lot of coordination and making sure that many parts work together at the same level of readiness and response, and that’s not always so easily achieved. 

This challenge was validated in Vitalik’s last essay, The Three Transitions where he advocates there are three essential capabilities that need to work together in Ethereum: L2 scaling, wallet security, and privacy. There is nothing new with these individual features as they were part of the early vision of the Ethereum blockchain. However, with increased decentralization, there are increasing degrees of complexity that compound when you start to implement these three prongs simultaneously. 

Ethereum is approaching its ten-year mark on its original inception. It’s time that we polish the ongoing tinkering in its base infrastructure and services so that apps can prosper on top of it. 

I’m looking forward to seeing more product managers and entrepreneurs drive the Ethereum ecosystem in addition to the base technology developers who are obsessed with technology tinkering. 

What The Blockchain Industry Can Learn From the Popularity of Artificial Intelligence

The A.I. industry’s approach to user adoption could prove instructive in the area of user friendliness

Image generated by DALL-E

In my third Fortune Crypto column, What Blockchain Can Learn from A.I., I contrast and compare how artificial intelligence burst onto the scene and is being adopted by end-users a lot faster than blockchain products have.

A primary reason is that A.I. has nailed the user experience, especially on a relative basis while blockchain products continue to miss their appeal to mainstream users.

A.I. refrained from overhyping itself prematurely, allowing ample time for development and refinement over the past decade, before it was ready for prime time. During that gestation period, developers dedicated themselves to fine-tuning the technology, tackling intricate challenges, and only now are we witnessing the true impact of A.I. on the average consumer.

In contrast, the blockchain industry continues to expose its tinkering to the public, resulting in a large gap between hype and reality. Several participants in that industry persist in promoting unproven products or exaggerated business models, exposing their experimental ventures to public scrutiny and inviting criticism or skepticism.

As a long-time blockchain enthusiast, this makes me incredibly jealous. I think A.I. can teach the blockchain a few lessons.

Here’s the link to the article (no paywall), A.I. exploded in popularity because it’s so easy to use. Here’s what blockchain developers can learn from that.

What’s Wrong In The Blockchain Industry

No, I’m not going to write about what the naysayers are already saying about the blockchain. We have heard these objections ad nauseam: tokens are made out of thin air, it doesn’t do anything we can’t do already, no use cases, every token is a scam or Ponzi scheme, cryptocurrencies are not real currencies, crypto can’t become too big to fail, etc. 

Rather, I’m writing about a constructive critique in terms of weaknesses that need to be addressed if we want to see the blockchain/crypto industry prosper to greater heights. That’s why the title specifically says “IN” the blockchain industry, not “WITH” the blockchain industry.

Here are the issues that need to be fixed, in my opinion.

1/ Become Regulation Friendly 

I’m not saying the industry needs to blindly surrender to established de-facto regulation. The regulatory field is complex and nuanced. Whatever the end-game is, crypto needs to be compliant with it, and then prosper within those rules. Regulation shouldn’t be suffocating innovation. So, that doesn’t mean that the industry needs to stop lobbying for, and educating legislators about the right way to evolve some parts of the current rules or create new ones. Ideally, we need to see updated regulation that is more friendly to crypto. 

2/ User Experience Matters 

No technology has gained mainstream experience without espousing absolute simplicity and ease of use. Today, many products and services (including wallets) in the blockchain space have horrible user interfaces and user experiences. As if they were not designed with the mainstream consumer in mind. This needs to change. I am longing to see crypto products that generate a “Wow” effect from a user experience point of view. 

3/ Standards, Standards, Standards

There are two types of standards: de facto or industry ones. De facto standards just happen because of adoption success. Industry standards are developed by competing industry players that agree on common ground principles that are neutral to their competitiveness. Sadly, I do not see enough de facto standards emerging in the blockchain space (especially across chains), and I see no cross-industry initiatives at the technical level. That brings us to the next topic. 

4/ Inter-Industry Cooperation

Related to the point above on standards, the industry needs to collaborate more on important infrastructure or middleware related technologies because these are the enabling blocks for creating the ultimate applications that users will be attracted to. As it stands, there is too much competition, and not enough co-operation. In the non-technical realm, yes, there are some “blockchain associations” counting several industry members, but I firmly believe we can do better and more in this area in terms of effectiveness and results.

5/ No-Code Solutions

The reason we now have 5 billion Internet users is because it’s so easy to get in and start using it via the many on-ramps such the ones provided by social media, email applications or e-commerce. Behind the scenes, what also made this possible is the wide availability of “no-code solutions” that allow anyone via a few clicks and some common sense to create something worth attracting users to. For e.g., in the area of publishing, WordPress or Tumblr (previously) lowered the bar for creating a personal website by enabling anyone to do that without the help of a developer. Shopify allows anyone to start selling their products online, just like that, with a few clicks. We will need similar types of no-code solutions that allow anyone to create new experiences that depend on the blockchain.

6/ Better Industry Voices

Last year, the mainstream media was too heavily focused on painting Sam Bankman-Fried as the perfect poster boy of crypto. Today, we know where that story led, and we are still overhung by that unfortunate head fake from the previously (arguably) most popular crypto cheerleader. Industries need cheerleaders to advance, just as for example Elon Musk was that special charismatic voice for the Electric Vehicles industry. There are lots of good and smart people in crypto, but we need more of their voices to be heard, and we need the mainstream media platforms to find them, respect them and amplify their voices while they give less airtime to the promoters, speculators and wannabes.

These are all strategic issues that will take time to get fixed. But we need to work on them.

Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, Marc Andreessen, B2B, SaaS, Growth Hacking, User Experience – Roundup #20, Nov. 24 2013

Startup Management is a manual selection of 15 article links from the hundreds of weekly articles being curated. Previous issues are available here. For regular updates, please visit the website’s River of news (as a stream), or Magazine view (by category).

Venture Capital and Global Ecosystem

A lot of good articles this week in the Venture Capital and global Ecosystem categories. Rather than list them here, here are the direct links for these categories: Venture Capital and Ecosystem.

Marc Andreessen

Here’s a transcript of an insightful interview of Marc Andreessen by Andy Serwer of Fortune, Inside the mind of Marc Andreessen. Must read. He talks about the state of IPOs, building long lasting companies, disruptive models, the shared economy, and where advertising and marketing are going.

B2B Marketing

There is a certain grind to B2B marketing in the early stages of growth. In Five Content Marketing Growth Hacks for Enterprise Startups, Ross Simmonds outlines 5 of these activities: 1) Webinars, 2) Presentations, 3) Videos, 4) Case Studies, and 5) Content.

VC/Entrepreneur Relationship

Brad Feld says to Create Structure out of the Gate and You’ll Thank Yourself Later, via a guest post by Ari Newman, where they advocate to treat your early debt investors like board members and institute structured governance expectations from them.

Raising Venture Capital

Alex Turnbull, CEO/Founder of Groove has 5 questions you need to ask yourself prior to taking VC money, in Why I Turned Down $5 Million in VC Funding. Bottom line is that your goals and the VC’s need to be aligned. There’s a good discussion in the comment section of that post, and on USV.com.

Employee Equity

Andy Rachleff of Wealthfront had a long post in First Round Review, The Right Way to Grant Equity to your Employees, where he lays out a process, some principles and formula. Fred Wilson responded, mostly agreeing with Andy, but pointing to a difference in how equity is to be calculated, in Employee Equity.

Product Management

Top Hacks from a PM Behind Two of Tech’s Hottest Products from First Round Review is a long read, but contains some really good nuggets of practical advice in product management from Todd Jackson who worked for Mark Zuckerberg and managed the fine line between Mark’s vision demands and the product development realities. “You can’t leave any chance for misunderstanding, or for even one person to walk away from a meeting with different conclusions.” And “When engineers are motivated, even if they run into something they don’t know how to do, they’ll say, ‘We can totally figure this out. We’ve got this.

Collaboration

Ellen Gottesdiener and Mary Gorman explain How do you Turn Competing Stakeholders into Collaborating Product Partners. You’ll need to figure this out when you have customer partners, business partners and technology partners, each with diverging goals and priorities.

SaaS Strategy

There is a gem of a chart in this article by Indy Guha, The race for growth: Why SaaS marketers are feeling the pressure. Developed by Bain Capital Ventures, and named “The “Revenue Pit-Crew for Cloud Apps Growth”, the table breaks the key enterprise SaaS tools by the various needs and outcomes: 1) qualified leads, 2) initial buy experience, 3) churn reduction and upsell revenue, and 4) cash for growth management. Must read if you’re in the enterprise/SaaS market.

User Experience

How do you provide design feedback when a team gets together to review a product? Jake Knapp of Google Ventures has Nine Rules for Running Productive Design Critiques. Not surprisingly, tact is as important as substance. And Frank Guo says to Create Great UX in an Agile World by Conducting Lean UX Research, if you’d like to inject agility into the user experience process.

Growth Hacking

Brian Balfour outlines 3 phases of evolution in Traction vs. Growth. They are 1) Traction, 2) Transition, and 3) Growth. They correspond respectively to 1) product/market fit, 2) discovery growth levers, 3) turning up growth levers. It’s a great read, and includes the metrics you need to look at, for each phase.

Software Development Choices

Should you build mobile apps in native or cross-platform code? “40 percent of developers have started building native, only to switch to HTML5, and 31 percent have started building cross-platform, only to switch to native” says John Koetsier in HTML5 vs. native vs. hybrid mobile apps: 3,500 developers say all three, please. However, Ravi Pratap says there’s and alternative to responsive design, in Responsive Design vs. Adaptive Delivery: Which One’s Right for You? “With adaptive delivery, the most significant difference is that the server hosting the website detects the devices making requests to it, and uses this information to deliver different batches of HTML and CSS code based on the characteristics of the device that have been detected.” Finally, a third article from Abhay Parasnis on a related topic, Native, Web, Platform: What’s the best way to build a new app?, where he lays out the pros and cons of each approach, from a developer’s perspective. That SUMs it up! Don’t forget to share on Twitter,  add us to your Feedly, forward to a friend, follow on Twitter, read in Flipboard, or just visit the website often and daily. To sign-up, please click here. William Mougayar Founder & Chief Curator Startup Management]]>

Roundup #17 Nov 3 2013 Conversions, VC/Entrepreneur, Content Marketing, Venture Capital, Marketing, Unicorns

SUM_ScreenshotThis weekend’s Roundup #17 from Startup Management is a manual selection from the hundreds of weekly articles being curated. Previous issues are available here. There are 15 article links in this edition. First, I have an announcement. We have revamped the Startup Management website with a new look, and expanded the scope of curation coverage according to 11 categories: Advice, Marketing, Venture Capital, Product, Ecosystem, Growth, Management, Market Data, Technology, Transactions and Think Tank. To get a feel for it, please visit the new home page, where you’ll see the magazine style, or river of news format. If you are already subscribed to the existing RSS feed, it has converted to the firehose of articles, about 30-40 per day. The feed for my blog posts only will be at http://feeds.feedburner.com/wmougayar. Also, every category or tag page will have its own RSS feed that you can access from the respective pages. Please send me feedback. We are still working on smoothening the experience, and have additional features coming-up this week. Feel free to also try it on your smartphone. User Experience Denis Duvauchelle reminds us of the 500 milliseconds rule, in Don’t lose users for eternity in the first 5 seconds: How to survive the blink test, based on a 2006 study that still holds true. He goes into details, explaining how to quickly retain users attention. My favorite part is about the “halo effect”. “The halo effect refers to how even though something has some minor flaws, the overall effect is positive and reassuring – and most importantly, trustworthy.” VC-Entrepreneur Relationship Fred Wilson and Matt Blumberg wrote a pair of related posts depicting each side of the VC/Entrepreneur relationship. In The Role of Personal Chemistry in Investment Selection, Fred explains the 4 stages of the process of getting to know an entrepreneur: first impression, subsequent meetings, reference checking, and negotiation. In Selecting Your Investors, Matt has 7 tips for ensuring you end-up with the best long-term partner as an investor. Lessons in Conversions Here are 39 tips from London Conversion Conference. It’s a bulleted list from practioners, on pricing, conversion, copyrighting, mobile, and testing. Y Combinator Startup School 2 follow-ons are worth a look. YC Startup School Mashup is a collection of speakers quotes. And Gregory Koberger has put together a visually pleasing notebook, Startupnotes, summarizing each presentation with creative graphics. Content Marketing David Armano has laid the law on The Five Content Archetypes. They are: Curated, Co-Created, Original, Consumer-Generated, and Sponsored. The drivers of attention are Mobile, Social, and Search. It’s a good framework to think about when looking at your Content Marketing practices. “The first wave of social was dominated by engagement and how to engage at scale. The second is dominated by engaging at scale plus content distribution and integration with marketing programs.Alexis Ohanian Interview If you’re a fan of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian (who isn’t?), here’s an hour long video interview with Jason Calacanis on This Week in Startups. Growth Hacking VC Chamath Palihapitiya Says He Has Cracked the Code for Making Startups Grow, and has a team of growth experts that he parachutes into portfolio companies to help them grow. Unicorn Story Only if you were under a rock during the week-end, you didn’t hear about the Unicorn Club article at TechCrunch that spurred a follow-on post from Fred Wilson on AVC. Here is a link to a tagged list of related posts, and you’ll experience the power of our new semantic tagging on the new Startup Management: http://startupmanagement.org/tag/unicorn-analysis/. Venture Capital Boris Wertz picks up on the fact that Funding is now global: location is no longer your financing destiny. This applies equally well to startups that are getting financing from outside of where they are located, and to VC firms who are crossing their traditional geographical boundaries to invest where ever there is a good opportunity. The world is getting smaller for tech investments, and that’s a good thing. Charlie O’Donnell says Don’t Send the Deck, because it’s like allowing someone to play your story on mute. Instead, go for the face-to-face meeting when pitching a VC. Marketing Debbie Laskey explains the realities behind The Blurring Lines Between Marketing and Technology. The battleground? Data. “At the core, the tension between the IT and marketing departments has grown because the two own important data.The Internet of Things The Economist Intelligence Unit has a special report, The Internet of Things Business Index, a quiet revolution (pdf). It’s a great read, and includes coverage by industry and geography. And Sarah Guo notes that 2 companies in this segment already have huge valuations: Nest at $800M, and Jawbone at $1.5B, in The Internet of Venture Dollars, Tethering the “Internet of Things”. That SUMs it up! Don’t forget to share on Twitter,  add us to your Feedly, forward to a friend, follow on Twitter, read in Flipboard, or just visit the website often and daily. William Mougayar Founder & Chief Curator Startup Management]]>

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén