Dad to a weapons-grade face-licker dog,
Partner to a hyper-energetic, monica-esque girl,
Runner,
Cyclist,
Hiker,
Aspiring swimmer,
Hobbyist Chrome app & extension developer,
Ex-management consultant,
(like to delude myself that I’m a) marketer,
Too-many-dashed-words user,
Romantic.
Text screenshots on Twitter are a desire path across the wall gardens around content in apps and platforms, and Twitter’s text-dominant streams.
Twitter cards, though a handicap on pure, free sharing of content, provide a way through the content wall gardens. But even the cards don’t provide the break through text clutter that images do. Specially, on 3rd party Twitter clients.
Trello labels – UI delight!
A few weeks back when Trello announced their unlimited labels update, I wrote a post about how it broke my usage pattern by significantly increasing keystrokes required to label cards.
Just discovered, by mistake, an even faster way to label than I’ve ever used before. Not sure if this is new, or I was just doing it the harder way all this time.
When hovering over a card, or with a card open, just press the number(s) of all the labels you want to toggle. No need to prepend it with ‘L’ at all!
Here’s how the keystroke count (from the earlier post) looks now.
Target: toggle labels 1 & 3.
My old usage pattern: 4 keystrokes (L + 1 + 3 + Enter)
Forced usage pattern after unlimited labels update: 6 keystrokes (L + 1 + Enter + L + 3 + Enter)
New usage pattern: 2 keystrokes (1 + 3)
Simply put, the number of keystrokes to toggle N labels has gone from N+2, to 3N to just N.
I’m not just pleased, I’m positively delighted! My love, respect, and addiction, for Trello just keeps on increasing!
Is Billion £ VC raise really that big in Europe?
TLDR: No. It’s less than even the quarterly VC investment rate in Europe.
There was a bit of chatter in the London startup investor community recently about the welcome increase in amount of funds being raised.
I remember Jon Bradford specifically mentioning close to a £1 Billion raised in a few months by 9 funds. There was a bit of a flutter around the group when JD mentioned the figure at #fplive – people wondering if all the money could even be deployed in the relatively nascent European / London tech startup ecosystem. Someone may even have mentioned valuation bubble, or some such gobbledygook.
Take a quick look at this chart from Dow Jones (source):
Last quarter VCs invested €2.4 B (~£1.8B) in European companies. At an investment run-rate of £1.8 B a quarter, and increasing, that £1 B raise in a quarter doesn’t look that big anymore.
There will be some additional liquidity from investment exits[1] – IPOs and acquisitions. But given the relatively young ecosystem in Europe – most maturing, successful European startups move(d) to the US for better valuation & operating environments – there can’t be too many exits providing the rest of liquidity.
Makes me wonder the other side now: If this £1 B raise is such a big deal, where has the VC funding been coming in from so far? We’ve been above a quarterly £1 B quarterly investing rate for over 6 quarters now. US VCs investing in Europe without direct presence?[2]
Either way, that £1 Billion figure doesn’t look as big as it sounded first up. And we really do need more of them, more frequently.
Continue reading Is Billion £ VC raise really that big in Europe?
Can’t rebuild without first breaking it down.
-Me?
Trello label upgrade – UI fine tuning
Trello, probably my favourite software out there, implemented an awesome new feature today – unlimited labels. Before today, users were restricted to the 6 system defined labels. We could rename them to what they meant for us, but couldn’t add new ones. This handicap was removed today.
Thanks for the unlimited labels, team Trello!
However, this upgrade also breaks a very useful keyboard ui pattern.
Earlier, I could press L (shortcut for label interface), followed by digits (codes) of all the labels I wanted added, and be done with labeling a card in one go.
Now, I need to press L, followed by label digit, followed by enter, for each label separately. Adding 3 labels to a card went from 5 key strokes to 9 strokes. Makes it harder, tiresome.
I understand the need to break the earlier pattern because of the possibility of double digit label numbers. These would make it impossible to decipher if L13 meant apply labels 1 & 3, or apply label 13.
My suggested alternative: reduce the number of custom labels from UNLIMITED to 26. Then you can use alphabets as codes for custom labels. Now L1C could mean apply labels 1 & C, while L13 would continue to mean apply label 1 & 3.
I hope 26+6 labels would be sufficient for most use cases though the teams at Trello would have better data to check the hypothesis.
Would love to hear views of Trello UX, design teams.
And, thanks for an awesome product!
Rise on your strengths
Solve hard technical problem for ONE obvious business opportunity (e.g. image recognition solution for construction industry). Better than solving an easy technical problem in a crowded marketplace (a messenger app).
Quite an insightful statement from Matt at a recent Google event at Campus London. Reminded me of a quote by someone else:
The wise warrior avoids the battle.
It also reminded me of couple of other sayings.
Fight to your strength, defend your weaknesses – anonymous
So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak. – Someone
What Matt and that someone are saying are perfectly in sync.
Matt, via Entrepreneur First, recruits young technical wizards, and equips them with business skills and support to help them launch exciting startups. By the definition of their recruitment filter, they attract people whose strength lies in solving hard technical problems, and who may have weaknesses in other areas – marketing skills to fight for growth and traction in crowded markets, for instance. For such teams, it makes obvious business sense to go after problems that are hard to solve technically, but (relatively) easy to sell to market. And thus, the insightful, powerful statement by Matt.
However. The statement isn’t the final truth for everyone. Following the second set of quotes above, you need to fight on ground that enhances your strengths, and hides your weaknesses, best. If you’re an excellent marketing & sales driver growth hacker, with possibly a good designer and an adequate developer for company, you might want to pick problems that are easy to solve technically, but in a big, vibrant (likely crowded) market – diametrically opposite to what Matt suggested.
And if you start succeeding, you’ll be well advised to acquire/acquihire/poach some of the graduates of Matt’s EF program :)
Diversity
How many white males does it take to lead and support a tech cluster?
Based on 2 recent power lists – as many as you can get in!
Both the lists are packed with white males, with little to no representation from many minority-gender groups. I’m not criticising the lists here, but taking them as a reflection of the state of our tech ecosystem. We have far to go…
Business Insider’s list of coolest 50 people in UK tech [Source]
- 39 of the 52(!) people on the list are white males.
- There are ZERO, by my quick calculation, black men or women on the list.
- There are just 8 women, in total.
- Only 2 non-white women, Eileen Burbidge and Bindi Karia, grace the list.
There are few people – male or female – more highly deserving of their spot on the list, but I’m surprised that there are *just* 2!
Fresh Business Thinking Power 100 [Source]
- 79, out of 100, people on the list are white males.
- Only 2 non-white women – Shalini Khemka and Bindi Karia – grace the list.
- 2 black males – Chuka Umunna and Samuel Kasumu – make the list this time. No black/origin females, sadly.
- Only 9 out of 100 people on the list are non-white.
Considering this list is more about thinkers and influencers – it has David Cameron at #1 – than about do-ers, the lack of diversity surprises me even more. I’m sure there are lots of non-white women and men leading, encouraging, and influencing fresh business thought in the UK tech and business communities.
I may be wrong. In which case, there simply need to be more. A lot more. In my humble opinion.
Revolution >> Reaction.
After the revolution comes the reaction.
If there hasn’t been a reaction, the revolution isn’t yet over.
– Me
Do > Talk
A prototype is worth a thousand meetings.