Category Archives: Success

Pandora Is Intentionally Annoying Users With Non-Relevant Ads

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Pandora

Pandora was one of the early players in streaming radio. The platform was innovative and instantly popular among younger demographics. Walk into a collegiate library during exam time and it seems like every student has headphones on with Pandora turned up.

One of my favorite features on Pandora is the song recommendation algorithm. In recent years the algorithm improved with the addition of a machine-learning element (thumbs up or down for each song as it plays). My pre-selected stations (Notorious BIG, Beastie Boys, Machine Gun Kelly, Corey Smith, Justin Moore, and Bruce Springsteen) are a staple during running sessions.

While the streaming music is enjoyable, everything comes to a screeching halt when an audio advertisement plays. Not only does the ad interrupt the lyrical genius flowing from Biggie’s mouth, but the ad itself is rarely relevant.

As an entrepreneur I understand the need for ad-supported business models. Pandora needs to make money. As a consumer I refuse to pay to make the platform ad-free. Just my personal preference but plenty of people are obviously willing to pull out their wallet.

The ad interruption wouldn’t be that bad if they were at least relevant. Recently I have heard multiple ads for Amazon Mom and tampons. In the past I’ve had divorce lawyers and daycares solicit me. How that is related to Beastie Boys and Bruce Springsteen is escaping me. Through conversations with friends, similar reports of obnoxious, non-relevant ads continued to be uncovered.

Time for my conspiracy theory! What if Pandora was playing unrelated advertisements intentionally to increase their conversion rate? If you wanted to annoy the shit out of someone with mom and tampon ads, there is no better audience than one listening to Machine Gun Kelly. So Pandora annoys me and I convert to a paid subscriber – all is good in the world.

This is would be an epic (yet commendable) ploy on Pandoras part if true. I would even become a paying customer, as a reward to them, if the company came out and admitted this. The chances of us ever finding out the truth are slim. Each time an ad plays, you will become more and more paranoid. I’ve been doing it for the last 3 weeks. Apologies for driving you crazy in advance but suck it up and admit “They got me, bro!”

Do you think Pandora’s algorithm needs work or they are intentionally annoying their listeners? Share your thoughts in the comments or tweet me @APompliano!

Filter Easy Is Hustlin’ It’s Way To Success

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filtereasy

Last fall I spoke at the Collegiate Entrepreneur’s Organization meeting on NC State’s campus. After the talk, two students approached me claiming they had a revolutionary idea. This is not uncommon after most talks or events.

At first, I thought “novel idea but these two frat stars aren’t going to be able to execute on it.” Well I quickly learned not to judge a book by it’s cover. Frankly, I don’t make assumptions about entrepreneur’s abilities anymore because of Kevin Barry and Thad Tarkington.

Today I’m happy to announce the launch of Filter Easy, an automated home air filter delivery service. The problem is homeowners are horrible about checking and replacing the air filters throughout their house. By not changing the filters, energy bills can increase double-digit percentages.

Kevin and Thad found a solution to prevent homeowners from wasting money monthly. After testing the market with a simple “prototype”, they were accepted into The Iron Yard’s accelerator program. For the last three months, these two energetic entrepreneurs have been hustling their asses off and created a scalable solution poised to disrupt the sustainable energy vertical.

Here’s the catch – Remember when I met them last fall? They were college students. Shortly after seeing the opportunity and getting accepted into the accelerator, they dropped out! The first time they told me, I thought they were crazy. After watching their execution, I feel differently. They’re hustlers at heart and I’m rooting for them.

Next on the growth plan is to raise a seed round and accelerate the implementation of their customer acquisition strategy. I’ll be one of numerous individuals advising them. While I’m sharing my knowledge, they have renewed my confidence in young founders.

Check out their site and let me know what you think. They’re moving back to the Triangle and will be another great asset to the growing ecosystem. And yes, I’m biased because two unassuming kids with an idea have gone out, worked their asses off, and proven to me that the American dream is alive and well!

If you have feedback or are interested in investing, please get in contact with Kevin, Thad, or myself.

Top Programmers Should Be Treated Like Professional Athletes

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nerd playing sports

Professional athletes have unique jobs. Many of them spend hours a day training. Both physical and mental conditioning. Everything from weightlifting and running to film study and playbook memorization.

The best players end up being compensated millions of dollars during their professional careers. Teams and sponsors want to do everything in their power to protect their “investments” and ensure on-field production. These protections come in the form of insurance policies or provisions in the athletes contract prohibiting certain activities.

The insurance policies might cover a stud quarterback’s arm or an elusive running back’s legs. Without the physical ability, many athletes become useless. An injury would be devastating to both an athlete and a team. Prohibitive policies within contracts might prevent an athlete from riding motorcycles, sky diving. or traveling to war zones on mission trips.

So what the hell does this have to do with tech talent and startups? After recently being forced to type with one hand, I’ve seen my production levels drop. I type slower. My quality of work has decreased and the amount of errors have increased. Luckily most of my job consists of email because if I was top programming talent, I’d be useless.

This leads me to the question of whether startups should take out insurance policies on their top talents’ fingers / hands? Should we begin to place prohibitive clauses in our contracts? For example, I tore the ligament in my finger playing flag football….yes, seriously!

Personally, I don’t think the injuries happen often enough to warrant the insurance, but it is a case-by-case decision. If a specific developer is mision-critical, insurance may not be a bad route. As for prohibitive clauses, I highly discourage them. The competition to land top talent is fierce; any negative aspect to a job may be the deal breaker. Again, I think that the injuries are too infrequent to require specific clauses. These worries may be before their time, but should be considered by every founder and team.

What do you think? Should we begin worrying about preventive measures to ensure top talent’s help? Share your thoughts in the comments or tweet me @APompliano.

Beardvertising: Novel idea or next great marketing platform?

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In order to increase revenue most companies must reach their target audience at the right time with the right message. To accomplish this effectively, its important to test and iterate continuously to find what works and what doesn’t.

It’s highly recommended to measure everything you possibly can when building a company. There are always limited resources to draw on, but maximum results expected. Keeping this in mind, I was intrigued by the explosion in interest of Beardvertising.

Credit to agbeat.com and beardvertising.com.

Credit to agbeat.com and beardvertising.com.

Beardvertising is the act of “paying epic beard owners to wear ads.” As the proud owner of an epic beard every Fall, I can attest to the attention these rugged feats of man-azing (man amazingness!) garner. It remains to be seen whether the creation of BeardBoards (think billboard in a beard) is effective but theres no denying its creativity.

The leading company, Beardvertising, claims both A&W Restaurants and Eagle One Automotive as early partners. Solid traction for a novel idea. I’ll be keeping an eye on the progress of this innovative advertising approach and am definitely cheering for these epic beards to reign supreme!

 

What do you think of Beardvertising? Does the general idea turn you off or are you intrigued to see one in real-life? Share thoughts in the comments or tweet me @APompliano.

 

Pomp’s 25th Birthday Wish

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Every year my birthday comes and goes without much fanfare. For the last 7 years I have been deployed overseas or conducting US Army training. This June 15th will be the first in almost a decade that won’t involve me wearing a uniform.

Instead of asking for gifts or throwing a huge party, my 25th birthday wish is to make a $2,500 donation to the Wounded Warrior Project. Many of my friends have benefited from the Project’s work. So many courageous men and women have sacrificed so much. By leveraging the amazing people I know, my goal is to show these warriors that they are never forgotten!

If 100 people answer the challenge and donate at least $25, we will reach the $2,500 plateau. In order to get 100 donations, I figure the campaign opportunity must be presented to 10,000 individuals. This conversion rate of 1% is definitely attainable.

If you are reading this I ask you to do 4 things:

  1. Go here and donate $25 to the Wounded Warrior Campaign
  2. Share this link on your Facebook page
  3. Tweet this link through every account you have access to
  4. Email this link to your contact list

Together we can all make my 25th birthday wish happen in 25 days.

Please let me know if you have any questions and I thank each and every one of you in advance! Email me at anthony.pompliano @ gmail.com or tweet me @APompliano!

My Personal Support Team Is Better Than Yours

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Recovery from Surgery

Entrepreneurs are notorious for wearing many different hats. This jack-of-all trades approach allows teams to stay lean and effective. My rule of thumb is that if you can’t do something well, go out and recruit whoever does it best. Adding rockstars to your team is essential when preparing to success.

The startup team gets tons of attention, while an entrepreneurs most important team goes almost completely unnoticed. The personal support team can be a huge factor in the success of a founder. Recently I had surgery on my non-dominate hand. Post-surgery I’ve been left with a cast that goes from my fingertips to above my elbow. Not exactly the easiest thing to maneuver with.

Faced with some unique adversity, I’ve been overwhelmed by the response of my personal support team. Everyone from my parents to girlfriend and best friends to brothers, they have gone out of their way to help me. These acts of kindness include cooking meals, helping me get dressed, keeping me on my medication schedule, driving me around, and just generally keeping me in good spirits.

The team is so dedicated that they have even helped me type emails and other documents while I dictated the text. Unfortunately I’m typing this one-handed because I couldn’t wrangle any help at 6am on Saturday morning! With that being said, I would be drastically less effective without this amazing support team.

Take the time to invest in your personal support team and ensure they know how grateful you are to them. This article was inspired by the desire to publicly thank my team for their unselfishness. Each one of them is a complete rockstar and I’m blessed to have them in my corner.

If you read this and realized you need more individuals on your personal support team, shoot me an email or tweet me. I’m more than happy to help where I can!

 

Television Is Becoming Archaic Right In Front Of Our Eyes

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Photo credit to realscreen.com.

Photo credit to realscreen.com.

On Wednesday, both TNT and TBS announced plans to live stream their content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you don’t include Bloomberg, they are the first networks to make the streaming content decision.

As soon as I heard this I knew one thing – We are closer than we think to television becoming obsolete. With services like DVR, Hulu, and Netflix, viewers no longer need to endure commercials nor sit at home on the couch to digest content. Ad-free viewing can be accomplished from a television, tablet, phone, or game console. Expect to see more networks follow suit with this live streaming announcement. The entertainment and media business has always been an arms race.

So what is stopping me from selling my TV on Craigslist or donating it to a poor college student? Sports. None of the major networks have figured out how to consistently stream games in real-time. There are plenty of apps or box scores, but I want the TV experience on my phone / tablet.

If Netflix or Hulu can create a solution that solves this specific problem, they will win the battle for market share. The sports development will finish the disruption of television and turn TVs into archaic pieces of technology. Think larger versions of a rotary phone!

 

Anthony Pompliano is a military vet turned tech entrepreneur. You can follow him on Twitter @APompliano.

 

 

How Content Paywalls Are Killing Ecosystem Growth

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Credit to goaleurope.com

Credit to goaleurope.com

Media outlets are doing everything they can to save themselves. Each month seems to bring worse news for an archaic industry that is being disrupted. Nothing is more painful than suffering through a disruption and being unable to re-invent yourself.

Recently I noticed that numerous media outlets have elected to leverage the “pay-to-read” model. Want to read articles that contain information accessible on other outlets? Read free of charge. Want to read exclusive content? Get your wallet out, that’ll cost you.

Before anyone gets upset, let me be clear. I am an entrepreneur through and through. I understand that the media is a for-profit business. In almost every industry, “exclusive” is interchangeable with “goldmine.” Keeping that in mind, here are my reasons why paid content is handcuffing our growth:

1. Knowledge is power – The Internet democratizes information. Makes it more accessible. Less knowledge is shared when readers are forced to pay for content. This is fundamentally problematic. A great example is the recent article WRAL TechWire wrote on Brian Handly. There are many entrepreneurs who could benefit from his knowledge, insights, and experience. By sharing the “educational knowledge”, the Triangle could improve itself and it’s companies.

2. Exclusive is bad – Every person and their mom wants to see the Triangle’s tech and startup ecosystem get more attention. The RTP is doing a fantastic job of tracking down journalists to cover local companies on a national platform. By taking exclusive content and putting it behind a paywall, local media outlets are drastically decreasing the reach that the content has. WedPics just raised $1.1 million and nobody can read about it because the exclusive story is behind a paywall. Not very encouraging if we are trying to attract additional investors from outside the Triangle.

3. Everyone has an audience – Decades ago, traditional media outlets were the only ones with an audience. In the modern world of social media, everyone has an audience. Media sites like ExitEvent and Triangle Tech Talk are providing valuable content that is arguably more widely accepted by the local tech community. For an extreme example, approximately 5,000 people subscribe to my personal blog. Not bad for a carnival barker! These digital audiences are killing traditional media and causing the established outlets to make ineffective decisions.

If we don’t address this issue, the Triangle is going to suffer. Every time that a local company does something newsworthy, are we going to seal the story behind a paywall? That makes absolutely no sense. If we continue down this path, funding will become even more scarce, students will stop believing it is possible to build successful companies here, and the world will continue to say “WHAT is the Triangle?”

I, for one, refuse to believe that we are willing to accept this fate. As a local entrepreneur, whenever DigaForce has newsworthy information, I will refuse to allow media outlets to put our stories behind paywalls. I hope you join me!

 

Anthony Pompliano is a military vet turned tech entrepreneur. You can follow him on Twitter @APompliano.

DigaForce Office Hours Are Back For May

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Raleigh-based DigaForce is bringing back Office Hours and it may be the best yet. Where else can you find a group of proven entrepreneurs in a single room with the sole mission of providing feedback on your business? Not many places.

mentorOffice Hours was originally created to avoid the networking type event. Most people don’t want to spend 2 hours walking around a small room shaking everyone’s hand. The truth is most names are forgotten. The people I remember are individuals who prove value to me. Whether through advice or introductions, value is required. If you don’t agree then this event probably isn’t for you.

DigaForce Office Hours is meant for a select number of companies to present real-world issues and gain advice, critiques, and feedback from successful entrepreneurs. Think mentorship on steroids. Past events have been wildly successful and led to some amazing results. This month the event will be at the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce on Friday, May 17th from 3-5pm.

If you would like to participate as an observer or mentor, sign up here. Everyone is welcome. I hope to see you on Friday!

 

If you are interested in being one of the 4 companies to present an issue or problem to the “audience”, please email me at anthony.pompliano @ gmail.com. Thanks!

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Message To The Triangle

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Photo credit to startupgrind.com

Photo credit to startupgrind.com

It’s no secret that I am a big Gary Vaynerchuk fan. He might be the only entrepreneur on the planet that I’d consider to be a better hustler. Might is the key word in that sentence! He plays the game on a scale that most people run from by just thinking about it. Go big or go home.

Gary recently recorded a video describing an innate difference in founders. Some are A players and then there is everyone else. According to him, too many individuals think they are A players, but unfortunately fall into the other category. Self-awareness is extremely important as an entrepreneur. If you can’t do something well, go find the person who does it best.

Here is Gary’s video:

 

Normally I would just share the video and let Gary do his thing. Today I want to take it a step further. He may as well have been speaking to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area with this video. I have been saying it for months – we don’t have enough good entrepreneurs building good companies.

Some of this is attributed to founders who find themselves in over their heads. Personally, I think that you can teach many skills that create more effective entrepreneurs. However two skills that can’t be taught are charisma and hustle.

So how do we solve this problem? There needs to be much more mentoring of startup teams by experienced entrepreneurs. This mentorship should revolve around honesty and authenticity. If someone’s idea sucks, tell them that. If the founder isn’t the right person to lead the company as CEO, tell them that. If the founder would be better served being someone else’s #2, tell them that. Nobody likes to be surrounded by a bunch of “yes men.” If they do, they’ve already lost the game.

On top of effective mentorship, we need to encourage local startups to dream bigger and act bolder. Too many companies are so focused on capturing the “Triangle” market that they never have a chance. We live in a global world. If you don’t have a plan on how to beat the team from India, the team from San Francisco, and the team from London (all working on the same problem you are), you’ve lost the game.

This is the big leagues. Startups are hard. They aren’t for the weak or faint-hearted. If you can’t handle the pressure, walk away while you still have your life intact. For those that stay, learn your strengths. Understand your weaknesses. Attack the goals that make you uneasy. Build something that changes your world. Whether you can sell or code, you have a purpose. Make sure that when the ride is over, everyone remembers what you did.