Why we need to stop SOPA and PIPA

You may be aware that a number of websites took their services offline yesterday to protest two laws being considered by the United States congress.

These laws would legalize internet censorship in our country, and put us on par with countries such as China and Iran when it comes to internet freedom. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin is a Co-Sponsor of the PIPA legislation. You can call his office at (202) 224-2152 if you would like to voice your opposition. 

Please take a few minutes to understand how these laws would impact the internet, and you, by watching this great tutorial on the laws by the Khan Academy.

 

The technology is the easy part

Of course, this doesn't mean the technology is easy.  It's just that when it comes to building a product, giving it a great design, marketing it, getting people's attention, and inspiring them to part with their money for what you've made...... the technology is the easy part.

I think about this whenever people ask me whether I think a product they want me to build could be successful.  Indeed, one person asked me how long I thought it would be until he could receive the return on his investment should I build out his product.

The problem with that question is that it's relative, and the answer depends on so many factors beyond the technology that it's impossible to answer.  The only way to respond is with a series of other questions:

How many people read your blog?  How many other products do you have that people use and love?  How many people do you have on a mailing list?  How many press relationships do you have?  How many investors do you know?  And on and on and on.

The mistake people often make (I've made this mistake too) is that they assume the technology is the hard part, and that if they could only get their product built, if they could only find the right engineer, that everything else would take care of itself.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It's true that sometimes you do need to build something in order to sell it.  Just know that of all the things you'll need to do to be successful - the technology is the easy part.

Opportunities are progressive

Sometimes, we fall into the trap of thinking opportunity is a huge, one time event that rolls by, and if we miss it, we're doomed never to see another one like that again.

I think though, that most opportunities are built upon the foundation of previous, smaller ones gone well.  So while each is bigger than the earlier; progressively they're only slightly larger.

Maybe, what looks like a really big opportunity out of nowhere is more like a wave on an ocean in which we've been able to put ourselves.  It can be hard, but I like trying to make myself look at things this way, because what happens is I see that there are little opportunities all around us - no matter where we are.

Very likely, someone with what looks like a big opportunity had a lot of good execution behind the smaller ones we didn't see.

Mark Cuban's terrible idea

Mark Cuban has had a lot of good ideas. He's an entrepreneur who is smart, wealthy, owns a world champion basketball team, and has been making cameo's on HBO's hit show Entourage.

He's seems pretty awesome actually.

But they say that in order to have good ideas, you need to have a lot of bad ones, and this truth is reflected most recently in his blog post titled "An Idea for the Economy that will Freak Out a lot of People but could be Fun to Discuss."

In it, Mark makes the argument that what our economy needs is jobs, and that the way we should do that is to allow companies to self identify themselves as companies that could create jobs, and get loans directly from the government.  The idea being that a business could say "If I had X dollars, I could make Y jobs" and that this would be more efficient than the government trying to create jobs.

I like this idea.

It drives me nuts that the Federal Reserve prints money, gives it to banks with almost no interest, and then we pay the banks somewhere between 3% and 6% when we borrow money.  And this idea of directly injecting capital to people that could create jobs is great.

Where his idea goes terribly awry though is in who he thinks should get these loans.  Here's his criteria:

Of course you will have to set some minimum parameters in order to prevent the dreamers, crazies and who knows whats from clogging up the system. I would set those minimums including: The company must be in business for at least 10 years. They must be have at least 100 full time employees. They must do 100mm in revenues.  And of course they must be up to date on their taxes and Im sure there are other things to think of as well.

Before the commentary, let's just list a some companies that would be eligible for this program, and those that would not be:

Eligible

• AIG - one of the root causes of our financial crisis
• Citibank - Full of liars and crooks
• Bank of America - Liars and crooks
• General Motors - Maker of cars that still have the same gas mileage as 15-20 years ago.
• Etc. Etc. Etc.

Not Eligible

• 37signals - Creators of Ruby on Rails, catalyst for some of the biggest innovations our economy has seen in decades.
• Chargify - the company he just invested in that has constant job openings.
• Tesla - Makers of the worlds only electric engine that gets a range of over 300 miles.
• My wife's new yoga studio - a new brick and mortar business in the neighborhood where we raise our kids.
• Countless technology startups
• Community banks that invest in local businesses.

The reality is that many companies that would be eligible under Mark's plan are the very companies that need to die.  And giving them loans would only keep them on life support longer.  Moreover, they are the less productive than smaller companies.

We'd be giving loans to companies so people could sit around conference room tables shuffling power points back and forth instead of giving the money to the doers that are actually getting things done right now.

In a rain forest, when an older tree dies, the younger trees literally race towards the sky in an attempt to become the tallest where their leaves get the sun.  Mark's plan is akin to bringing in bulldozers - trampling all over the small trees - and holding up the dead trees with hooks and chains.

It's paying $1,000,000 per year keeping your brain dead 110 year old grandmother on life support instead of putting money aside so your children can start their own businesses.

Mark's idea to allow businesses borrow money directly from the government at extremely low interest rates is a good one.

But he's horribly, horribly mistaken on who should actually get the money.

You should use Formstack

I've been working on a few different projects lately, and it's occurred to me that Formstack has become one of the software tools I rely on most heavily.  In fact, it has become almost as important as the 37signals products.  Which is appropriate I suppose, since I first heard of them about 3 years ago or so on the now discontinued product blog.

If you're not familiar with Formstack, they make it very easy to create online forms.  Now, I know what you're thinking. Ooooh, online forms......seriously?  But seriously, they're awesome, because there's some pretty great stuff you can do for your business by using them.

Integrations all over the place.

Before I get into some of the specific things you can use them for, it helps to understand that Formstack can act as another way to get information into other systems.  They've integrated with customer contact systems, Merchant Accounts, email providers, and a bunch of others.  I describe them as a window into many other systems.  Okay, now that we understand part of their awesomeness is that they hook into a bunch of other stuff, some specifics.


Accept money online. Beautifully.

PayPal is of course one of the most common ways to accept money online.  Problem is, their interface for entering in credit card information leaves a lot to be desired.  Since Formstack integrates with them though, a $30/month merchant account from PayPal (they also hook into tons of other merchant accounts as well) allows you to create a seamless buying experience for your customers.  Formstack has these same integrations with tons of other providers, AND, they now integrate with Chargify - which is a recurring billing system.

My point is - you can set up an awesome online payment system with little effort that is extremely friendly to your users.  I used this for Maile's payment setup for her yoga studio which you can check out here if you want to see it in action.


QA Scripts

For another project I'm working on right now, we're collecting a bunch of user feedback on a specific application.  There are certain sections we want to understand better, what users found intuitive, where they had issues, etc.

By using Formstack I can send out a single url to many people at once, collect a bunch of information from them, and use the report generator to visually look at the data.  This makes it easier to spot issues quickly and better understand the main problem areas inside an application.

Mailing Lists

If you want to collect email addresses you can do so easily, and have everything flow into an email service provider like Mail Chimp.

There are a host of other things you can do with these guys, and whatever your business, there's probably a good chance there's at least one thing they can make you're life easier with.

Fuel for inspiration

I personally think having Formstack, if only for integrating with a merchant, is worth the money. Even if you're not selling anything yet. 

One of my very favorite quotes is by Jason Fried; that "Inspiration is Perishable."  He explains that ideas last for ever, but the inspiration to act on an idea - that's fleeting.  And so when you're inspired to do something new, or try doing an old thing in a new way, that you should act immediately.  Because you'll never be more motivated to do that than when you first have the idea.

And so ultimately, that's why Formstack is so great.  Because it helps you harness your inspiration, act quickly and - and this is very important - create an experience for your users that feels elegant.

I simply can't recommend these guys enough.