Doughnut Plant Chelsea

Chelsea Menu

Went over to the Doughnut Plant grand opening at Chelsea Hotel. At this point, I have to confess I haven’t trekked over to their original LES location yet.

Donut plant is amazing since it shows what you can accomplish by doing one thing well. For a person like myself who is used to Krispy Kreme and generic mom & pop donut shops in CA, Doughnut Plant is an eye opener. The ingredients are premium and the price doesn’t shy away from NYC pricing (think $3 donuts).

Doughnut Pillow Wall

The Chelsea location is a decent size, especially for NYC. Seating exists as a real possibility here.

Carrot Cake Donut

The cream cheese filling made the carrot cake donut pack a much bigger punch. Cream cheese in desserts is akin to bacon in anything. Delicious.

Cinnamon Bun

Cinnamon bun was alright. More of a filler type food than the main attraction.

Oatmeal Cake

The oatmeal cake was my favorite donut from Chelsea. Flaked with oatmeal crusting, the texture is amazingly crispy. While not as healthy as a bowl of oatmeal, this donut is a great example of experimenting with nontraditional dessert toppings.

Peanut Butter & Jelly Donut

A remake of the traditional jelly donut. This guy got squared up and peanut butter topped. High in calories? You bet. Great as part of a routine diet? Yes, if it’s once a month or less.

Real Entrepreneurs Get it Done

Consider this post the TL;DR of this great Inc article by Leigh Buchanan. The article itself picks insights from a University of Virginia study by Saras Sarasvathy of 45 serial entrepreneurs.

There are two extremes of successful business people illustrated by the study:

“Sarasvathy likes to compare expert entrepreneurs to Iron Chefs: at their best when presented with an assortment of motley ingredients and challenged to whip up whatever dish expediency and imagination suggest. Corporate leaders, by contrast, decide they are going to make Swedish meatballs. They then proceed to shop, measure, mix, and cook Swedish meatballs in the most efficient, cost-effective manner possible.”

This illustrates the difference between successful entrepreneurs (think scrappy startups) and successful business people (think MBAs). Going with the flow VS sticking to a plan.

Entrepreneurs prefer lean start ups:

“Rather than meticulously segment customers according to potential return, they itch to get to market as quickly and cheaply as possible, a principle Sarasvathy calls affordable loss.”

As long as they iterate fast and bootstrap, the cost of failure is time lost. Even then, valuable lessons are learned.

Your first customers are much more valuable than investors:

“Sarasvathy says expert entrepreneurs have learned the hard way that ‘having even one real customer on board with you is better than knowing in a hands-off way 10 things about a thousand customers.'”

This makes sense when you think about it. A customer is someone who has a demand for your product. Investors can help you scale or network, but they can’t prove the market as well as a legitimate customer does.

Entrepreneurs don’t worry about competition since they don’t see themselves competing directly:

“Entrepreneurs fret less about competitors, Sarasvathy explains, because they see themselves not in the thick of a market but on the fringe of one, or as creating a new market entirely.”

As this relates to online startups, don’t worry about the existing competition since your product won’t be the same. Ask any entrepreneur and they will tell you why their product/service is different and will revolutionize the space.

The whole article is a great read as it takes advantage of many successful entrepreneurs. Sites like Mixergy profile one person at a time, whereas this article draws upon business leaders in aggregate.

iPad 3 Coverage

The tech industry and the press that covers it never ceases to amaze. The pace at which news breaks is breathtaking, and then immediately forgotten for the next big thing.

John Gruber singlehandedly set off the iPad 3 launching with a “September release schedule” rumor. This is amazing because the 2nd generation iPad has not been confirmed by Apple. Make no mistake, the 2nd gen iPad coming in 2011 is as sure as the sun rising tomorrow. As Gruber writes, Apple has set itself up for a predictable June iPhone and September iPod refresh. This makes sense as the iPod can capture the holiday season. According to Gruber, it’s worth it for Apple to cut the 2nd gen iPad lifecycle short so they can use the iPad to headline annual September announcements.

I would imagine Apple isn’t pleased about iPad 2 in March and iPad 3 in September rumors. For those following the tech industry, the original iPad has already grown long in the tooth. The 1st gen iPad is a do-not-buy since the iPad 2 is coming out any month now. With 2011 iPad 3 rumors, if there’s any credibility to it (besides pure hearsay at the moment), consumers would be wise to avoid the iPad 2 and wait for the iPad 3. This helps depress current iPad sales while allowing the competition (RIM’s PlayBook, HP’s TouchPad, Motorola’s Xoom, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab) to gain market share.

If it were any other company besides Apple, debating the next, next iteration of a product would not be front page news. This rumormongering is great for pageviews, as there is nothing better for pageviews than unsubstantiated claims. On the iPad 3, Gruber disclaims that “[he’s] really guessing” and not “being coy and actually releasing information.”

Nowadays, Apple makes the news as much for things it has not done as the things it has done. Before the iPhone and the iPad came out, they were perennial Apple keynote bait. Again, great for pageviews and filler blog posts. Apple has so much influence in the industry that its presence is everywhere even when it tries not to be. Looking at this year’s CES, tablets were out in full force (a year after the iPad came out and the competition took the tablet form factor seriously). Heck, the Verizon iPhone confirmations by mainstream media (wsj, nytimes, bloomberg, etc) dominated the end of CES coverage.

The tech press is ruthless in its turnover. Yesterday, burning oil platforms was big news. Today, it’s the iPad 3 and HP’s webOS. Tomorrow, it doesn’t even matter what it is, because it will be old news the second it is posted online. Unless of course it is something Apple has not announced. Then it will never go away.

Reader Link Returns

Whoohoo! This is a good thing.

Gmail screenshot

Three Gmail things to note (from top left, clockwise):

  1. The Favicon Google Labs option is smart design.
  2. The Google Reader link is back! This deserves more exclamation marks.
  3. I’ve had the BETA tag on since it came out in Google Labs.

Regarding #2, people may say RSS is dead, but RSS is still an amazing, useful technology.

Pandora’s Dated Browser UI and Poor Monetization

As an iPhone user, I’ve been using Pandora for a couple years now. The mobile user interface (UI) works well.

Pandora iPhone UI

In this iPhone screenshot, we can see that the Kanye West station is currently playing. We can easily change stations by scrolling up/down and selecting a station. Adding or removing a station is intuitive. This is a solid, popular mobile application that makes great use of the environment.

My question is how come the desktop browser implementation is so poor? Perhaps they want you to use Pandora One? I don’t hit 40 hours a month and don’t need to pay for ad-subsidized radio.

Pandora browser UI

The current implementation works, but that’s like saying the DMV works. Don’t get me wrong, Pandora is a great service. If they spent time improving their free browser application, they could significantly improve the usability and monetization.

Pandora browser UI with Ad

Their current model is to frame the audio player with rotating ads, which is a perfectly fine business model. What is not acceptable is how little of the screen is used. It’s one thing to have a simple application with simple controls. It’s another to have a simple application with poor controls.

The audio player takes up a ballpark of 600 x 300 (w x h) pixels. It’s debatable whether your site should have a minimum width of 800 or 1024 pixels. It’s inefficient to only use 600 x 300 for your audio player and force your users to scroll up and down within the tiny box of radio stations.

I wanted to make the point that Pandora should allow you to flag songs into a wishlist for easy purchase later. Apparently this exists as their bookmark feature. After reading the FAQ, I’m unable to access my bookmarks or my profile. This is because Google Chrome blocks new windows by default. In this case, I’m siding with Chrome, because there is no reason that Pandora has to open a new window/tab so I can view my bookmarks. How about using some of that screen real estate, outside of the 600 x 300, to display page elements. Crazy right?

Pandora is a great, free service that works. They could improve their monetization by explaining bookmarks and improving their UI. Their browser conversion rate for song purchases would be significantly higher with a better browser UI.

An Exercise in Sharing

This post is more thinking out loud (what I like to do on this blog). Free association with services and sharing.

Snoop Dogg on Instagram

Many sites serve to provide information (such as Wikipedia). Other sites share info (such as Fmylife). What I want to focus on are services that share info in a defined social group. Meaning that you can cultivate lists of friends and share with them. These social sites may enable you to share publicly. In fact, they may be incentivized to make everything public (à la Facebook).

Here are some services I came up with in no particular order:

Service Sharing
Instagram Photos
Twitter Text/Links
Ping (from Apple) Music
Foursquare Location
Group Me Txt
Buzz (from Google) RSS, etc.
Yelp Reviews
Foodspotting Food Photos
Facebook User Updates
Blippy Purchases
Scribd Documents

Clearly there are services I’ve missed.

For any unfilled areas, there exists a startup opportunity. Instagram is a newcomer that has gained significant traction, so anything can be done given proper execution.

Is there a search engine that shares all your searches on purpose? What about an Instagram for short video?

Introducing the McPizza

Over winter break, I was introduced to the concept of a McPizza. As the name implies, it’s a combination of McDonald’s and pizza. If you’re feeling extra creative, you can use other fast foods for inspiration.

McPizza before baking

Underneath the pizza cheese and chicken nuggets are cut up burgers (one McChicken and one McDouble to be exact).

Baked McPizza

After a short hop in the oven (under 10 minutes), you get this calorie bomb that rivals the Double Down.

Pizza Bell

Here is a pizza topped with Taco Bell, as if you weren’t already turned off by hamburgers on pizza above.

Baked Pizza Bell

Here’s a side shot of the taco pizza. It’s heavily carb-laden with soft and hard taco shells in addition to the pizza crust.

Recommended Blogs Dec 2010

I subscribe to several blogs on Google Reader. I want to take a moment to highlight some blogs that I read.

Honorable Mention

Not exactly a blog, but Hacker News is great for startup coverage. It’s not Reddit, and it’s more helpful than TC. I’m not a fan of their RSS feed since I like reading the articles and then deciding if I want to read the comments.