Review of TWIST Episode 13
For the past several years at the office we have been listening to Leo LaPorte’s TWIT shows/podcasts. Jason Calacanis has been a guest on many episodes and always had some interesting comments, although he seemed to have the gift of gab on any topic. I then started following Jason on Twitter and soon after that found that he was going to do a podcast on startups. I watched the premier show and thought it was a bit dry but informative. Episode 13 is the 5th episode of TWIST that I have watched and based on episode 1 the show is improving in quality. I don’t normally blog more that the 140 characters on twitter, but since Jason was having a contest, I figured what the hell. Instead of just saying what I liked and disliked about this episode I figured I would to a review / summary since the material in the middle of the show is useful for future use.
The show is broken up into several segments and as most shows the first segment is some introductions and housekeeping. However in this episode the first 9 min was about 4 min too long. Periodically the camera would shift to co host Tyler and it looked more like it came from a webcam rather than the same type of camera the rest of the show is done with. Would be better to toss Tyler at a table so his laptop does not have to sit on his lap and give him a better background. If Jason needs to look at Tyler when he makes a statement, Tyler should be a little less off stage so Jason does not have to turn completely around to get eye contact.
After housekeeping , Jason commented and showed a clip of a movie called “We live in public”, this was a portion I could have done without. The first guest, Matt Mickiewicz of SitePoint.com and 99designs.com, is introduced around the 18 min mark. Matt seems like a man of few words so Jason commented on 99designs and how much he likes it and gave a brief explanation on why it is good resource for startups looking for some logos.
The Ask Jason segment (meat of the show) starts about 21 min into this episode. This is the part of the show that I believe many of the listeners/viewers tune into see. The first caller asked about hardware startups and Jason gave a very insightful opinion on hardware being a hard market due to the big players and costs. The caller gave his idea for a podcasting device. Jason gave some great suggestions on how the caller might proceed by doing a minimal run taking pre orders to get a feel for the demand. Jason references kickstarter.com and challengepost.com (a site Jason invested in) as a site to utilize to get started with funding. The 2nd caller was a more interesting caller because you got to see Jason engage more with the caller. The caller works on mobile app developments and like most small companies was trying to get their foot in the door selling his product to large companies. He seemed frustrated that after several meetings with customers they sound interested and then it just dies. Jason explains that with a large company getting the meeting may not be the hardest part, but you may have to do numerous meetings due to the size of the company and the organization structure. His suggestion for a small business is to protect yourself by expecting that the deal is not going to happen by about the 6 or 7th meeting and continue your business like the deal will not happen and continue to work other avenues. Working for a small company we have witnessed this exact thing and like Jason said the key is to not put all of your eggs in one basket working a deal only to ignore other avenues. Another good suggestion from Jason was to make something that is geared to the specific customer ahead of time and then contact them to show them and tell them that if they are interested in seeing more you would be happy to work with them.
The next segment starts around the 41 min mark. And like Ask Jason, Jason’s Shark Tank is probably the 2nd main reason people tune in. This is the segment where you have your pen handy and take notes. Each caller was given about 120 seconds to pitch their idea. Hearing the callers pitch their idea and Jason’s comments is not only handy for startup pitches but every day pitches for projects at work. The first caller’s idea was a site that tagged content based on users emotions to the content, the extra that set it apart from other sites like buzzfeed was the ability to package up content and share that with others via social network sites. The interesting part of this call was when Jason quizzes the caller on what has he done in the past and caller explains previous startup and that it failed. The callers comments seem to jive with the direction Jason was going with his questioning to find out how much passion he had for his new startup. Jason moves to his second question asking how this is going to move from a “feature” to a real product. Jason questions the caller about if he really believes that this will be a destination site where people would go to find the content. He asks it in such a way that leads the caller to second guess his answer. Jason seemed to hope the caller would say YES, if you build it they will come. After 52 min, the guest Matt Mickiewicz gets to say more than two words (about 6 this time), Jason gives his background and asks about Matt’s background to show that good entrepreneurs started out with nothing and were not given the golden spoon. Jason thinks that caller has the makings to be a good entrepreneur because he is pissed off about the failure of the last startup, self made person and he is narrowing in on his new startup idea. Matt gives his assessment, likes the concept of brining multiple content into one place. Matt asked the million dollar question: how are you planning on making money. Caller does not have a fully developed revenue model and thinks he will figure it out based on how users use the content. A good comment from Jason was when he explained the difference between a great entrepreneur and a donkey entrepreneur . The great entrepreneur gets $1 out of a nickel and the big companies get a nickel out of a dollar.
The next caller does his pitch comes from vivolve.com who allows teens to keep a portfolio for all of their accomplishments so that they have an easy way to market themselves. Jason starts off with one of those Ouch!! Comments. Jason tells the caller that his ability to pitch the product was terrible but his idea could be brilliant. Jason gives the caller a lesson on pitching this product. He tells the caller to present the problem that they are going to solve and then to make an analogy. Off the top of his head Jason gives the pitch which was very good. Jason points out that teens usually have nothing except the crap they have on MySpace and Facebook which is not professional enough to show a potential employer. Jason asks caller to explain why he created this and caller shows some of his passion. Matt finally gives him opinion and says that he likes how caller started with one niche and expanded. Tyler jumps in and gives his suggestion to include the intern market space. After they are done with the caller Matt and Jason toss some ideas around on how the callers idea could be expanded to include other services.
The interview starts around 1 hour and 18 min. The interview segment finally got into talking with Matt and it was interesting to hear how SitePoint.com came about. It was great to hear how Matt started out so young and made it bit and has been moving the company forward and expanding with sites like 99designs.com and flippa.com.
The final segment was the News at about 1 hour and 34 min. The intro to the news segment seemed a bit long. During this segment several news items are tossed out and then commented on. The story about Snow Leopard and how it really has no new features. Jason comments on he wishes that there were more custom monitors like curved screens or more special purposes monitors for things like twitter. This reminded me to go back and look for some of the small monitors like Mimo usb monitors so that topic was ok. Next topic was Twitter in the NFL and then Yelp and their augmented reality feature for the iphone. These stories were not of much interest to me except for Jason’s comment that he felt Apple will be easing up on the app submissions. Jason then did a PSA for not shaking babies J The story that I thought that I would just skip over was the Microsoft Photoshoping an ad. They tied this into how do you control social media and company policies. Jason explained that you are representing the company with everything you do and that extends to personal social sites. This week Jason injected a mini segment on Jason’s tips for not getting divorced. He explained that If you don’t have a lot of time for your significant other, make the time you do have spectacular so that your girlfriend has a great story to tell during girls night out. This week’s Dead Pool featured Tipjoy which was a micro pay site. Jason felt that paypal will be bigger than ebay and they should move up to more bank like features and that Twitter and Facebook will all have their own way to exchange money soon. Next were the rumors of Apple Tablet. Jason’s take on the table and its make or break will be the price. He sees it more as a controller device. News ended with url shorteners and the sites using bit.ly. The issue with the shortener services is if they go out of business. Jason believes that they should start a trust to guarantee that the urls will work for quite some time to come if the company gets sold or goes out of business. Jason believes that bit.ly will be sold in the next 12 months.
All and all I really like the show, it is a bit long, I think the editing will improve and thus make the show even better. The last suggestion is to always make sure that any urls mentioned in the show are listed with the show archives.
