Let’s start with Graph Search. Graph Search introduces two very important aspects. The first, it allows us to search not just among our friends but also on the friends of our friends and even just on the general Facebook user base. On top of that it introduces an easy to use “semantic like” search engine.

Here are some examples of how a user can use it:

A while ago, I decided that I would love to date someone that is also an entrepreneur like me. With graph search I can just write: 
”female friends of my friends who are single who live in New York, New York and are above age 27 and are entrepreneurs.”  And voila! A list of names and photos come up.

But maybe I just want to go out to places where these girls tend to go to. That’s just another simple search:

“Bars nearby visited by female friends of my friends who are single, live in New York, above age 27 and entrepreneurs.”

Or maybe you are actually into models. Why not search: “bars in New York visited by Models.”

You are trying to hire a new developer for your startup and want to see where they tend to hang out? 
”Places in New York visited by Developers.”

You are a Manchester United fan and want to know where to go to watch their next game?
“Bars in New York that people who like Manchester United have been to.”

Facebook also seems to be starting to explore recognizing sentiments. You can do a search like: “People who admire Stagedom” (Stagedom is the name of my company).

And here is where Timeline comes in and with it what everyone has missed. The important thing about Timeline was not the UI change. It was about the Open Graph API that Facebook released along with it.

You see, trying to analyze the meaning of every status message out there is extremely hard, expensive and often not accurate. So what did Facebook do? They gave all the applications out there the power to categorize their data. Spotify knows that a song is actually a song, the same way that Fandango knows what is a ticket and what is a movie. The timeline and ticker UI and the Open Graph API underneath it is all about categorizing our world in a way that allows Facebook to easily understand and search it (using Graph Search).

And now the same thing is happening again. Everyone looks at Graph Search as a search box inside the Facebook UI and that’s just the wrong way to look at it. Graph Search will be all about the API that Facebook will release above it. Just think about how many new opportunities startups will have when they will be able to access this power.

Possibilities are endless– from new kinds of dating apps, to hiring apps, product recommendations, to travel tips and many more. Not to mention how you can use these capabilities for optimization of advertising, dynamic display advertising, audience extension and many more ways to make advertising more effective.

Facebook built this in an extremely smart way. This was their vision for years and we are finally starting to see it come to life. While Google is indexing the world’s knowledge, Facebook is building the world’s biggest database of well-defined objects, actions, sentiments and of course – intentions.

Timeline and Ticker were the bait to get everyone to give them their data and even categorize it for them. Graph Search is the first step to how they can now use the data to power an all new set of applications, which by turn will push an all new set of data back into their databases. Genius.

Now before all you geeks and techies jump on me, let me say just that: Android Jelly Bean is really good. It’s so much better than any Android version before that. And yes, if you are a geek it is a good enough if not a great OS for you. But if you are a “regular” user. If you are the geek mom or dad, Android is just not for you. Not yet at least.

I recently bought a Nexus 7 tablet for my parents. I figured out that if all they wanted is just Internet consumption and media, why spend $400 on an iPad if they can get it for $200 with the Nexus.
When I played with it in the store, it looked good enough. It looked like (finally) a mature Android implementation. Something that even them, my parents, can actually use.
But I was wrong. Really wrong.
Because under the nice UI, when you are actually at home and trying to do some simple things, the Android eco-system just breaks completely.
Let me give you a couple of examples:

- Media files synchronisation: One of the most basic tasks you will want to do with your tablet is syncing your movies, music and photos to and from it. With iOS, all you need to do it connect your iPad to your computer and that’s it. iTunes is doing everything for you. There is no concepts of files or folders. Everything just stays in sync. As a power user I hate iTunes, but for most people this is a magic moment.
With Android? Google never built the equivalent of iTunes (and how the hell no???). You need to manually copy files between folders (and which folders?). You need to figure out which app will open which file types. It’s all way to complex for the average user.

- Languages: All my father wanted to do is have a simple word processor that can write in Hebrew. on the iPad, it’s super easy. iOS comes built in with support to almost any language. And when the system supports it, also all the apps on top of it have the same support. So put aside that you can actually install iWork which is Apple own “Microsoft Office” suite, you can also just do a simple search on the app store, choose the app you like, install it and that’s it. Job done.
With the nexus? Oh boy… Even for me it was extremely hard. After fighting Android for a few minutes to figure out where the hell do I install more keyboards (Hebrew in this case), I went back to the Google Play store. Quick search for “Office” returned a few apps that looked promising. But after downloading them, we learned that language support in apps is completely disconnected from the OS support itself. The only available keyboard was the English one. More searches around the web, brought me to some very sketchy and suspicious sites that talked about installing fonts, drivers and many other complex procedures that no “regular” user will ever know how to do.

These are just two examples. They show a very basic difference in companies DNA. Google is built on top of hackers. They have a hacker mentality of building cool products you can customize as much as you want. Apple simply build stuff that works. Yes, you won’t be able to do everything and anything with it. But the stuff you can – it just works. Magic. And that’s what most people actually need.

The Xbox “TV” experience is superior to what Apple offers with the Apple TV. But this is all going to change very soon.
For a few years now, people have been whispering about the upcoming Apple TV set. A new device that will change TVs forever. What everyone forget is that Apple doesn’t have to go that far.
Yes. Having a TV set designed by Apple will be amazing (just look on the new iMac). And even a “cable” setup box built by Apple will be cool. But in order to really change everything Apple can do something much simpler:
All they need to do is allow developers to develop iOS apps that can run directly on Apple TV devices.

Just think of the possibilities. Take the hundreds of thousands of apps already on the app store, and now put them in the middle of the living room. Allow all thee developers to re-imagine and invent what’s the living room experience should look like. Unlike Microsoft, Apple has an army of developers and proven technology to make it happen right now.
The big question was always how to control all these apps. The Apple TV remote control is just not enough, and you don’t want to add another dedicated device that people need to handle.
So what’s the answer? Microsoft just gave it to us.
Simply use the iPhone and iPad as the new controls, the same way Microsoft is doing with Windows Phone 8.

I’m sure Apple want to be the one who deal directly with all the cable providers and hollywood studios. There is a lot of money to be made there.
But in order to really change the living room forever they don’t have to. They can delegate this to thousands of startups who will pound on the doors of the studios with ideas on how to provide and enhance their content in innovative ways.
My guess: iOS 7 will be the first one to run on the next generation of Apple TV boxes, and another huge industry will change forever. What do you think?

Shahar Nechmad is the Founder and CEO of Stagedom, a startup trying to reinvent the future of music and entertainment.
Before that Shahar was the founder and CEO of NuConomy, a next generation web analytics and advertising company which was sold to Live Person (LPSN) in 2010.
Shahar has more than 15 years working with technology, from hard core programming to business development and marketing. He presented on many staged around the world, talking about technology and entrepreneurship.
Shahar passions cover music, sports, technology and travel. He lived in 8 different countries, visited 5 continents and always ready for the next adventure.
Thanks for reading…

I want to make the opposite point.
Well… not exactly. I do think we should have a good work/life balance. I just think that in many cases we should strive to make sure that our work is our life, or better say – eliminate the word work from our vocabulary.

I’m an entrepreneur. I’m working now on another startup. I spend long hours on my startup. I find myself many times coding well into the night. But no. I don’t work hard. My startup is part of my life the same way my friends and family are. My startup defines me the same as my hobbies are.
Many times I look at some of my friends who are working 8 to 5 and really feel sorry for them. Yes, I spend many more hours “working” than they are, but for me this is not work. I don’t look at the clock to see how many more hours I need to do this. Don’t get me wrong. There are many times that I prefer to be diving in some exotic place or just laying on the beach. But I’m not longing for my work day to end. I love what I do.
When I think about my last startup, some of my favorite times I remember were the long nights, coding with my co-founder. The thrill of building something cool. The notion that everything is possible. It’s like going to the gym – you like the pain that comes from lifting heavy weight.

Instead of trying to lower the amount of hours we spend on work, maybe we need to strive to make work not feel like work.

UPDATE: I just want to clarify one thing: I’m single and I don’t have kids. I fully understand that when you have family, what I’m wrote here simply doesn’t apply. When you have kids, you need to spend time with them. Period. But until than…

People live with the illusion that startups can be a quick way to get rich. All you need is one fast hit and you are settled for life.  This notion attracts many people to leave their jobs and try to build “the next big thing”. But this notion is just wrong. The amount of companies who really made it big in a short time is way lower than what you think. In reality, behind almost every “fast exit” there are a few very long and hard years of nonstop work. Years when no one heard about the company and their products and the reason why for everyone else their success seems to come out of nowhere.
This is exactly what happened in the case of Draw Something. Omgpop actually released 35 games before Draw Something. 35 games that almost didn’t make any revenue. 25 games that no one heard about. But also 35 games that built a team with now years of experience developing social games.

This is the true story behind every startup. A team that work like crazy, don’t sleep, always in fear of running out of money. A team that do a million small things for a few years, a million small things that together build the product into “an instant success”. This is why startups are a marathon. A physical and emotional one that is not for everyone. But if you can make it. If you have the strength to pull it through, you might get to be an instant, fast hollywood story success.

First and most important is the fact that users don’t need to do any action to share something. It is all done automatically in the background. You listen to a song – it goes to your timeline. You watch a video – it goes to your timeline. I’ll be the first one to admit that at first, as a user, this option is a bit scary. I wouldn’t want to use this option with every service. But Facebook thought also about that and are giving you, as a user, some nice benefits to enable this functionality. If you use it with a music service like Spotify for example, it allows you to easily see all the music you listened to. Forgot what was this cool song you discovered last week? No worries. With one click you can find it. It’s also quite cool to see how your music taste change over time.

But for developers this functionality is pure gold. It means that users will constantly keep pushing your content in front of their friends. The specific app aggregation view is also great. It allows other people to easily discover vat amount of content through their friends’ profile pages. Just check the how my Stagedom timeline looks like. With one glimpse you can see exactly what music I listen to, which new artists I discover and find new music videos from the web.
And the best thing: The integration with the Open Graph API is very simple. It took me just a few hours to configure everything. There is simply no excuse to not integrate with it right away.

I’m a big fan of music subscription services. While they became all the rage in the US just recently, Iv’e been using a few of them for years now.
But this week I got a few big disappointments.  A few of my favorite artists came out with new albums and to my surprise I couldn’t find them in any of the services including Spotify and Rdio. The artists I’m talking about are Coldplay, Kaskade and Florence + The Machine.
Now, it’s true that it might be just a coincidence and I hope it is. Because the other option might suggest a change that will make services like Spotify end up like Netflix – The “Rewind” service for music.

But if Spotify is growing like crazy, why we even talk about such an option?
Because under this growth, there are still some big problems and questions that the streaming services and the music industry as a all need to solve. Some examples are:
If you are not a very big name artist, you are simply not going to make money from people playing your music with these services. And if you are a big name like Coldplay, you can actually decide to put your new album on iTunes only for a few months, get the big money there, and than push it to streaming and hope to get some more.
And what if you are a small band? Well, the big point that the streaming services are fighting for is that they allow for people to discover your music. That people won’t buy your albums, but if they can listen to them for free they might discover you and you will make money on touring. The problem with this is the statistics behind the service. For example, on Spotify, more than 90% of the songs played are the same 10% of songs mostly coming from big artists (Worth to note that this is the exact opposite from the stats behind Pandora).
Now, this might change a bit now that Spotify is integrated with the new Facebook Open Graph which allows for better music discovery, but we will need to wait and see.

So will we see more artists and labels take their music off the platform or will subscription will become the main way we consume music int he future? Tell me what you think.

I know that we live in a world where everyone push us toward coming out with a minimal viable product. But for me, sharing is the definition of this minimal functionality. Exposure is the lifeblood of every startup, and every time someone share your content it means free exposure for you. In a world where we are going from search to discovery, you simply can’t allow yourself to not have built in sharing capabilities. Just see how automatic sharing exploded Spotify numbers in such a short time.

So if you are now sitting in your garage developing the next big thing, start first with sharing functionality. After that add the rest.

But the last few months here gave me some perspective on the long debate whether you should build your startup in NYC or the bay area. I wanted to share some of my thoughts here with you:
I’ll start by saying that there is no doubt that the NYC startup scene is getting bigger and better in rapid pace. It’s nothing compared to where it was just two or three years ago. You can find many weekly meetups and events, there are many new co-working spaces like General Assembly and WeWork Labs and it seems that every day there are many new entrepreneurs around.
When you live here you can not miss the buzz around. NYC feels like the center of the world. It feels like it is the next big thing that going to pass the bay area without looking back. But as much as I love this buzz and rush, whenever I go back to visit SF it takes me just a couple of days to put things in proportion.

NYC is getting better. It even might be the second best place to build your startup in. But it is still a far second. The amount of investors, money, developers, experience entrepreneurs and potential partners in the bay area is still a few times more. If you want to build a super ninja technology team, it will still be much easier to do that in the bay area. If you want early stage investments and access to capital, you will still have many more people to meet with in the bay area. NYC is getting better, but it’s still not there.
You can easily see that in the numbers provided by the Huffington Post. SF share of all VC deals for 2011 is four times bigger than New York. If you look at the amount of money committed this number grows to five times more.

But before all my New Yorker friends are after me let me add that I think that NYC has some advantages over the bay area:
First and foremost it’s the access to industries and businesses that simply don’t thrive in the bay area. If your potential customers are in the music, fashion, entertainment or finance industries this is definitely the place for you. But it’s even more than that, while in the bay area when going to networking event you mostly meet techies and entrepreneurs, here I find myself meet actors, musician, non profits, scientists and many others. The variety of people around the city is something that is hard to find anywhere else in the world. This also affect the kind of early crowed you can reach. They are not going to be just the early tech adopters. They can be the trend setters and “cool kids” that we at the bay area sometimes love to push away.

So bottom line, what is my recommendation: I think that if you are still building your team and initial product you will probably do better on the west coast. But when you want to go out, test your product and push it to the market you will probably want to start spend more of your time in the big apple.

I never met Steve Jobs and I never will. But even without ever meeting him, with his work, his vision and his spirit he touched and changed my life again and again. The world just seems a bit less magical today. 

Coming from the creative and digital sides, many startups that try to work with the agencies, can’t understand why they can’t convince them to use their products. For us it’s hard to understand why these agencies spend millions of their customers money on TV and other platforms instead of do highly targeted and measurable advertising on the web. What startups need to understand that it’s not about measurability – It’s about predictability.

These agencies have worked and ran campaigns on radio, newspapers and TV for tens of years. They have seen everything and than again. They know exactly what will happen when they put a million dollars on a prime time TV campaign. They don’t need it to be fully measurable as the web. They have done the same thing so many times before, that statistically they can predict the exact results. At the same time, we the startups, offer them superior solutions. But these are also solutions that no one have tried before. Solutions that were tested just a few times. For us a couple of years seems like a long time, but these companies were doing business for tens of years.
What startups needs to understand is that in the end of the day it’s about people lives and careers.  Predictability is also security. It’s knowing that your job will probably won’t be in risk.
What we need to offer agencies is not more data points to measure, but a way to have the comfort and security of predictable results.

The past week ,together with yesterday announcements will make Facebook an all new experience than we are used to. Timeline is amazing user experience and the thing that got most of the attention. But the most important announcement was the automatic publishing from apps.
I’m sure that in the next few weeks we will read about users uproar against this change. Hell, even to me this seems a bit creepy and hard to swallow. But like many other changes they brought in the past, I will bet that also this time, one after another, we will all get used to it and then hooked to it. In a year we won’t understand how we did things before that.
Facebook bets on what they said for years: Most of us don’t really have much to hide. Our basic human need to share and social with others is stronger than our need for privacy. If you thought that people knew much about you until now, wait until this new auto publishing will become mainstream.

From the developer perspective, this brings up an all new world of possibilities. Auto sharing of media, location, events. Suddenly everything is social. Everything can be discussed in near real time. Maybe more important, more sharing means much better opportunity to be discovered by other users – the lifeblood of any startup. For Facebook these new changes also put structure around the data. Structure that allows for much better understanding of our actions and interests, which of course translates to better targeted advertising.

One interesting thing to note is the fundamental shift in Facebook strategy. With Facebook connect and the like button, they basically brought the platform out to the all web. Now they are doing the opposite. Click on a Hulu video or a Spotify song and interact with the media inside of Facebook. If this will catch on, Facebook will become its own “mini Internet”. Understanding the new graph rank (and how to manipulate it) might become more important than ranking in Google search results and SEO.

It’s been years since we saw so many fundamental changes to the web and how we interact with it. From Google+, to new mobile devices and now the Facebook changes. The way we will interact with the world and people around us will be very different two years from now. This is an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurs and startups and I’m super excited to be in the middle of it.

There are tons of post that details why you should not adopt a stealth mode and the importance of getting early feedback. But there is one additional very big benefit for pitching early: How it affect you. It’s amazing to realize how your pitch changes from one to the next. It’s not just that you slowly perfecting your pitch. Many times it actually change how you think on your business model, future obstacles and features you need to implement in your product.

The moment you try to explain your business to someone else something changes. Suddenly it’s not just about your feelings and instincts. Suddenly you need to face some hard truths that you didn’t want to admit. There is also some very strange but powerful psychological effect when we say something out loud instead of just thinking it.

So my advice to all of you entrepreneurs is very simple: Pitch early and pitch as many times as you can.

The first obvious difference is in the target market. While most American startups are trying to first go after the US market and than rule the world, many of these companies are targeting their own local markets. It might be obvious, as these are the markets that they are more familiar with, but personally I’m not used to see that. Originally coming from Israel, I’m used to see entrepreneurs who always thinks first on the US market. The main reason – It’s the biggest one. It’s the one with all the glory.

This decision, going after the local markets seems to also have big effect on the products themselves. While a lot of the US companies are trying to innovate on features and technology, developing brand new experiences, many of the international companies are trying to create local versions of products that are already successful in the US. I see much less technology innovation than companies which try to answer specific business needs that the local market still struggle with.
Most of them will probably won’t become the next 500 million dollar company simply because their target markets are not big enough, but many of them might be able to pull a 10 – 20 million dollars company which might be acquired but the big guys when they decide to attack these markets. These companies represent some great opportunities for the new kind of seed investors who want to invest small amounts of money in many small, agile teams who can solve a pain point and execute quickly.

That said, I would like to see more entrepreneurs around the world trying to go after the American market. We all want and need to see the next Skype coming up. The talent is there. Now all they need is to dream bigger.

When you look at a place in foursquare, you also shown a message similar to: “People who went to xxx tend to also go to yyy, zzz…”. This data is better than any review or rating you can ever read. It tells me that people who tend to go to some of my favorite places also go to this place. This is the highest possible recommendation you can get. Even better, it also shows me which of my friends tend to go there.

True, a year ago Yelp went into the checkins game as well, but my guess is that foursquare boost a much bigger set of real life data that they can now harvest to create compelling features like that.

I just came back to the US after a month in Israel and Europe. One of the first things that immediately struck me was how I missed the Internet speeds you get in the US. The difference in speeds between what Americans get and most of the rest of the world are huge. And this difference changes everything.
Speed matters. It enables different use cases of technology. It opens up many new opportunities. I can’t tell you how many times I clicked on a video in Israel and got frustrated when it kept stopping in the middle. How many times I had to sit and wait for a long time to download the movie I wanted to see. Most video services like Netflix and Hulu are closed to people outside of the US, but even if they were open it just won’t be the same.
Speed changes also our shopping habits. One click buy is a great thing which push people to buy more online. But that works just if loading the product page, photos, videos and the all experience around it is really seamless. As we go more and more into mobile, the ability to instantly buy things on the go will drive complete new businesses.

These difference might get even bigger if service provides will be able to charge different prices based on consumption and speed. This might create a bigger digital divide between people even inside the US. Same as it was with the web, one of the biggest contributors to the explosion of mobile was the “all you can eat” data plans. Even if you have a very large data plan, the moment you need to think about your usage and consumption everything changes. This small moment of hesitation, these small moments of “buffering” changes the all experience and the way we consume media.

The Perfect Team
Dallas and Miami couldn’t have been more different teams representing different mentalities. Dallas was built around one super star player, Dirk Nowitzki, and many talented and hard-working players. They strike a balance between young, almost unknown players and older experienced ones.
Miami on the other hand is all about the superstars. It’s a team that was built around three super star players who a bit like mercenaries were hired together to bring a ring. During the series it was obvious which approach is better. And like in Sports also in startups, when building a team what you want is not a team of superstars. You want a balanced team. You need a few superstars that will lead but you also got to have the hard-core developers who are willing to put the hours and write the “dirty” boring code.
You need a team that will have a good chemistry and together will be much better than all the individuals alone.

It’s a long process to success
In sports as in business there are no shortcuts. Through the years there were many examples of sport teams who tried to skip some levels, building an all star team in one summer. From Real Madrid to Chelsea and now the Heat. It almost never works. The teams who win the championship are always the ones who have been together for a few years.
Same thing for startups. Most startups will need to work for years before they will exit. During these years the people will get to know each other better. Understand the better and worse sides of everyone. A startup is a marathon, It’s the founders job to observe this process and tweak it along the way. Bring or let go people making the team just a little better each time.
Same thing for your product. Facebook, Google, Windows or any other platform out there was never perfect from day one. It never meant to be. When you launch a product it should be good enough not perfect. With time, you need to look at how your users using it, tweak it again and again in thousands of little iterations until you get it to be just perfect.

Believe in yourself  and be consistent
Along the way there will be many people out there who will tell you what you should do. How you need to change your product or your business. When I raised money for my last company, every VC we met with had something different to say. Wanted us to push to a different direction. One of our big mistakes was that we actually listened to everyone. Now don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of smart people around you and you should be smart enough to know to listen. But in the end, you should also understand that this is your company and your direction. You should take under consideration everyone advice but than listen to your heart and follow your own path.
This is exactly what Marc Cuban done with the Mavericks. For years everyone around told him to sell Nowitzki, to change the team, rebuild it, etc. But he believed in his way. Knew which team he want to build and just kept working on it. And today it finally paid off.

To wrap this post up, I just wanted to link to Marc Cuban (Dallas Mavericks owner) post game interview. Replace the word “championship” with “exit” and this interview will sound like a startup pitch instead of one of a sport team, with great lessons to all of us:

First, let’s start with the obvious. The Music industry is a multi billion dollars industry that is shrinking every year. But what’s important to note is that it is shrinking not because the product (the music) is less loved, but because the business around it is rapidly changing. This in itself is a sign of a great opportunity. Any changing industry is an industry ripe for innovation. People are passionate about music now more than ever. People are actually extremely passionate about music. And anything that people are passionate about is something that they are willing to pay for. You just need to find the right way to let them do so.
Just look at how Netflix changed the movie streaming industry. For years everyone talked about the end of the film industry as everyone are just pirating movies and suddenly the all picture looks different. Netflix managed to build a product that is simply good enough to convince everyone to pay for it. Their growth was so big that now everyone from Amazon to Google is going after them, trying to replicate their model.

The second reason I think there is a huge opportunity in music is the industry structure itself. Like many other industries, much of the way the music business is handled  is still rooted in the way business was done years ago. I just finished reading Donald Passman book “All You Need To Know About The Music Business”. In it, Donald breaks down a guide for the new artists on how the business works and how an artist should build his contracts, career, etc. A couple of things really amazed me:
- How complex the all thing is. You need to be a MBA graduate to understand how much money you need to get paid. I really have no idea how a young artist suppose to control his career and destiny.
- How little does the artists actually getting paid. If you are not a real star you are not going to see any money and most likely you will actually lose some.

As an entrepreneur coming from the outside all of this is actually exciting. Old complex industry that still stuck in the dark ages with much bureaucracy and many players between the consumer and the product. And all of that around a multi billion, international market? Are you kidding me? It’s the dream for every tech entrepreneur.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not naive. Every major disruption for such a big industry is going to get tons of push back. It’s not just that people don’t like change. With such a big change, there will be many people who might lose their jobs or need to fight for their place in the new world. Trying to shift an all industry can probably be painful like a root canal. It’s also not a quick and easy exit. It’s a process. A long one. But in its end lies a really big opportunity and a chance to really change the world.

If you are a killer Ruby, PHP, Python or mobile (iOS or Android) developer – we want you!
An upcoming startup with strong roots into the music, media and entertainment industries is now hiring the core team. Come and help us change the world!

Contact me here or at shahar at deathstarlabs dot com.

Also – iPad, drinks and a big kiss for anyone who refer us great candidates.