From the day of eMazeU inception more than 2 years ago, our goal was to create the simplest video sharing that can be used by everyone, including computer shy parents. And we succeeded in this goal as our customers say. It is so easy, that even non-English speaking grandparents living in countries such as Croatia, Russia, Israel, China, Italy and USA are using it without any need for any kind of support.
Recently I received an email from one of the customers that said: “It took me 10 minutes to connect to the network and TV and 0 minutes to set it up – and it worked! Now I understand where the name came from!”
Following Zoran’s acquisition we hope to enable our technology for millions of customers.
Zoran is a world-wide leader of digital imaging technology, which is used across a wide range of products and market segments. Its chipset are found in many leading consumer electronics brands in digital still cameras and camcorders, television sets, DVD and Blu-Ray players, set top boxes, printers and other product categories.
So it makes a perfect sense to join forces with such market leader and enable our solution in many products on a large scale. We hope that this move will let us bring our simple video and photo sharing to millions of people, from their cameras and camcorders to the TV sets of people they love.
The first half of the journey was rough and tough but unbelievably interesting and satisfying; the second part within Zoran I hope will be even more inspiring.
If you had a chance to meet Irena, my wife, you know how very unique she is. She has a rare ability to really affect people by her incredible energy, optimism, unusual view of the world, sense of humor, creativity, goodness and many other great qualities.
But she also possesses a great talent to write, that finally got expression in her new blog “6 Cherries’ Blog” , which started several years ago in an old fashioned way and finally realized into online version. Irena has a gift to see the bright side of the life, to smile in the most difficult situations, to be positive, energetic, loving and caring.
And she is also my best supporter in eMazeU. While her blog is about life of a mommy, a wife, a daughter and a friend, being an entrepreneur’s spouse she reflects a lot on this side of the journey, like in posts from 2009 and 2010. But to really understand how much her support means, I would suggest reading her posts about entrepreneurial drive as she sees it. Only a true life partner will backup his/her spouse like Irena does.
Our family language is Russian, and that’s how this blog is written, as it also have a lot of internal family folklore, jokes and our children talks, so at this stage unfortunately only a portion of people could read it.
Hope you will like it, and if you do – please subscribe, comment and share with your Russian-speaking friends. Irena for sure would love to see you around at "6 Cherries' Blog". After all, as it is her first really independent entrepreneurial project, your support is essential.
I attended today the address of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium. Last thing I’d expected was that in 45 minutes I will convert from being Medvedev-neutral to Medvedev’s fan.
It did not change my political views or position on any internal or external topic in Russia, but it did change the way I perceive the Russian leader now.
His closing remarks (as I recompile my memory now) were:
"I visited the Silicon Valley and must admit that what’s going on here leaves a huge impression, even on a President. I envy you. I envy that you can work every day on what you love, you can reach self-realization and earn the money and live fulfilling life. Isn’t that a definition of happiness? My dream is to enable the same in my country and that’s also my politics".
I buy it more that any general political talks about reforms, court and law system, fight with corruption, and so on. All this is important but freedom of self-realization speaks directly to my heart, and is easy to understand.
While all other points he made in his speech about transparently, openness, predictability, laws
and reforms are covered in large by the press, this concluding short remark had really touched me. When the President of one of the most beautiful, yet somehow challenged by its own history, countries speaks in the laymen terms about how exactly he envisions his citizen’s happiness, he, I believe, earns the try.
It’s yet to be seen if such ambitious projects as Skolkovo or his other reforms and projects will be successful, but for me this short concluding remark of Medvedev showed that the current Moscow leadership has a great chance to make these projects work and raised my confidence.
I left the meeting inspired; not a bad score for a day.
Update 6/24: Voice of America reported about this visit and as part of this report interviewed me (watch around minute 3). The report in Russian is called "Президент Медведев покорил Калифорнию" which means "The President Medvedev conquered California":
In my previous post I wrote about Russian television channel NTV (in Russian – НТВ) report about Silicon Valley that was aired today, Sunday June 20, at 7pm (19:00) Moscow time in the weekly summary news program “Itogi” (Summing Up). The report, called “The Cradle of Innovation” also had an item about eMazeU, which actually was the biggest one of the 7 minute report (about 2 minutes).
The NTV's chief USA correspondent Alexey Veselovskiy and operator Vladimir Badikov visited us and shoot a nice report. They spend quite a lot of time talking with us about the product eMazeU DivvyTV and the company eMazeU, and were very excited to learn that the product has a great consumer appeal, a fact they leveraged in the report. They called NTV crew in Israel and send it to house of my parents-in-law to record how the product works and its value proposition in the real use case.
The NTV program covers several interesting aspects of the entrepreneurial spirit of the valley, shows an interview with renowned Tim Draper from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and then summarizes with eMazeU story (it is nice to be in the same program with Tim Draper :-) ).
But what is really great in this report is that the NTV team immediately understood the product and its concept and showed the real life example of how it is used and how it erases distance and technological boundaries between family members.
Большие надежды. Дмитрий Медведев накануне призвал ускорить работу по инновационному центру «Сколково», создание которого считают краеугольным камнем модернизации. И, как уже было сказано, лично возглавил его попечительский совет.
О своей заинтересованности в данном проекте уже заявили американский телекоммуникационный гигант Cisco и всемирно известный Массачусетский технологический институт. Символично также, что за океаном предстоящий визит российского президента в Соединенные Штаты предложили назвать «саммитом инноваций».
Корреспондент НТВ Алексей Веселовский побывал в колыбели последних — Кремниевой долине и узнал, как это работает, причем, не без помощи наших же бывших соотечественников.
На картах это место называется долина Санта-Клара. Но во всем мире оно известно совершенно под другим названием. Это знаменитая Силиконовая долина в Калифорнии, или Кремниевая долина — Мекка компьютерщиков и программистов всех мастей. Больше половины мировых компьютерных технологий были придуманы и появились именно здесь.
Если верить статистике, каждый пятый житель Кремниевой долины занимается инновациями. А когда приезжаешь сюда лично, то не покидает ощущение, что придумывает здесь что-то новое каждый второй.
Пока Роберт возится с чехлом, Дэвид строит уже вторую модель велоэлектростанции. Утром прокатился, а потом от заряда весь день работают его компьютеры. Вскоре он надеется продать свою технологию в Африку. Это мастерская под названием «Построй свою мечту». За сотню долларов в месяц здесь можно творить почти круглые сутки.
Себастиан Берч, менеджер: «Мы тут помогаем молодым компаниям начать свое дело. У нас они создают первые образцы. И при этом им не надо тратить миллионы долларов на оборудование, мы им все предоставляем за умеренную плату».
А начался инновационный бум долины со Стэнфордского университета. После Второй мировой на местных ученых градом посыпались заказы и деньги от правительства США. Работа над госзаказами порой приводила к неожиданным находкам. Первую в мире компьютерную мышку здесь придумали, когда делали аппаратуру для центра управления полетами НАСА (NASA).
Билл Инглиш, в 1955 -1971 гг. — старший инженер Исследовательского центра в Стэнфордского университета: «В мастерской нам сделали корпус из красного дерева. Вырезали колеса. И так появилась первая мышь. Мы назвали ее „мышь“, потому что от коробки тянулся провод, он напоминал хвост. Это было в 63-м году».
Интернет тоже отсюда родом. Это была разработка новой системы связи для министерства обороны. И больше 20 лет, до начала 90-х, чтобы попасть в сеть, нужно было запрашивать специальное разрешение в Стэнфорде.
Госдотации и сегодня это основное средство поддержки местной науки. И если речь идет не о совсем секретных разработках, то ученым и студентам даже позволяют на них зарабатывать. Как в случае с программой трехмерного сканирования человеческого тела. Она позволяет врачам попасть внутрь человека без хирургического вмешательства и детально рассмотреть причины болезни. Программа обошлась в восемь миллионов долларов. А теперь университет начинает ее продавать.
Пол Браун, профессор медицины Стэнфордского университета: «Государство не хочет нас содержать вечно. Поэтому мы разрабатываем технологию на бюджетные деньги, а затем продаем ее. Заработанное остается в Стэнфорде, потому государству меньше приходится на нас тратить».
Но государственные деньги это лишь малая часть того, что питает всю Кремниевую долину. Когда частный бизнес понял, что вкладывать в инновации выгодно, сюда пришли тысячи инвесторов. Например, Тиму Дрейперу мир обязан появлением сервисами «Хотмейл» (Hotmail) и «Скайп» (Skype). Не считая десятков компаний поменьше, это его самые удачные вложения. Они его сделали миллиардером. Он — венчурный капиталист. Теперь вкладывает деньги в новые проекты, а в Долине его прозвали «мастером риска».
Тим Дрейпер, инвестор: «Если приходят люди и говорят: мы хотим заработать, а те, кто умнее, говорят: мы хотим, чтобы Вы заработали, то я сразу понимаю, что ничего не получится. Это должно быть в сердце, нужно мечтать изменить мир. Вот, что самое главное. И тогда я даю деньги».
При этом в среднем на 20 вложений лишь одна компания или технология принесет прибыль. Но она может с лихвой окупить все затраты.
При помощи интеллектуальной голосовой системы поиска можно забронировать билеты, узнать погоду, что идет в кино или театрах, массу других вещей. Ее придумали студенты всего месяц назад, сейчас эту разработку купила компания «Эппл» (Apple).
Стив Чешински, вице-президент Исследовательского центра Стэнфордского университета: «Знаете, здесь главное нацеленность на успех. У нас в США, если что-то не получилось, фирма обанкротилась, то легко можно начать все заново, с нуля. Во многих других странах тебе просто уже не дадут работать».
В Кремниевой долине нет особого бизнес-климата, он один по всей стране. Нет и льготного налогооблажения — выживает лучший. Зато на улице здесь просто климат отменный. И начинать свой бизнес можно прямо в кафешке.
Ольга Кострова, программист: «Здесь все новички работают из кафе. Тебе сюда еще и кофе приносят. Что может быть лучше?»
Ольга создает интернет-компанию по продаже рекламы и сейчас ищет инвестора. Она три года в Долине и уже привыкла общаться на английском языке. А работает на улице. Весь город Маунтинвью, где она живет, благодаря «Гуглу» (Google) обеспечен беспроводным Интернетом.
«Гугл» вообще задает здесь тон. На кампусе играют в волейбол во время рабочего дня, можно поплавать в бассейне, а поработать просто на лужайке или в одном из местных ресторанчиков, где для сотрудников все бесплатно. Творческая свобода еще один критерий успеха Кремниевой долины. Именно поэтому у нее давно уже интернациональное лицо.
Игорь почти год разрабатывает проект своей жизни — домашний телеканал для каждого. Родители в Израиле, возраст пенсионный и как смотреть, например, фотографии внуков в Интернете или видео, они даже не представляют. Так у него и появилась новаторская идея сделать телевизионную приставку. Чтобы все, что он отправляет по Интернету из США, за океаном могли посмотреть на обычном экране.
Он снимает детей в Сан-Хосе. Загружает файл в компьютер. А через 10 минут в Тель-Авиве дедушка и бабушка включают телевизор. При этом устройство автоматически перекодирует самые разные видеофайлы в один формат. Ради этой разработки семья поставила на карту все. Они продали квартиру и сейчас снимают, залезли в долги, живут от кредита до кредита. Зато первая пробная партия приставок уже готова.
Игорь Чирашня: «Чувство такое, что ты что-то сделал настоящее, что-то свое. Грузовик приехал с партией. Прыгали от радости, выпили чуть-чуть».
Своих покупателей Игорь знает поименно. Их пока не очень много, но он уверен в успехе. Тем более, когда вокруг знаменитая Кремниевая долина.
Игорь Чирашня: «Любые вещи которые есть, они тут происходят. Ты выходишь за пределы своего гаража, ты можешь встречаться с людьми на любых должностях, на любых постах и если они верят в то, что ты делаешь, они могут помочь».
На таких энтузиастах, готовых рискнуть всем ради своей идеи, и держится легенда этого уголка Калифорнии. Здесь давно поняли, что в инновациях главное — не технологии, а люди, которые их разрабатывают. И пока они приезжают сюда и привозят идеи со всего мира, с будущим Долины будет все в порядке.
Эфир подготовили Алексей Веселовский Директор-корреспондент представительства НТВ в США (г. Нью-Йорк)
For those who follows recent developments at the Russian technology sector, this visit echoes with one of the most daring and talked about projects in Russian Federation right now – building Russian version of the Silicon Valley, “Skolkovo”, just 12 miles outside of Moscow. Being very clear on importance of technology development in Russia, President Medvedev pays a special attention to this project.
Naming technology innovation as one of his key priorities, Medvedev plans to meet several prominent companies in the Bay Area and have a better “first hand” view on their technological and commercial advancement and the dynamics of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.
At the first glance these political news seem far from being of interest to eMazeU, a company which is dear to my heart and soul. However, presidential news brought an interesting twist to our recent development.
Prior to Medvedev’s trip to the USA, Russian television networks are doing a wide coverage of the planned trip and different topics of it are being discussed in the news. In particular, since technology agenda is very high on the President’s list, the networks show many items related to this subject.
Last week the crew from NTV, one of the major Russian TV channels with an audience of more than 100 million people, visited the Valley to create a report about Silicon Valley innovation and entrepreneurship.
During their 3 days tour of the Bay Area they visited several famous companies, such as Google. But also they wanted to meet some startups too and eMazeU made it to their list.
We were told that the report will be part of the weekly prime time news commentary program Itogi ("Summing up") and planned to be aired on Sunday June 20 at 7pm Moscow time. If you do not have a Russian NTV channel, you would be able to watch it online at http://www.ntv.ru/.
The most critical resource of startup is time. Time is always against startup because startup always runs out of time. That’s why when you work in a startup you hate weekends. Well, it’s more like a love-hate relationship: from one side weekends are great to spend a time with the family, but from another they are the slowest business days in the week, which is really tough.
It seems that only you work on a weekend and the rest of the world is frozen. Emails are slow, conference calls do not happen, the response that’s so important to you just does not arrive. It’s all about the pulse. Some companies have a pulse of once a week. Take VCs. Their heartbeat happens on their partners meeting. How many times have you heard, we will discuss it on our next partners meeting and I will let you know.
Others have a pulse of once a month or quarter. Whatever these periods are, a normal startup pulse is hundreds times faster. And it does not stop on weekends. It’s 24/7 as opposite to 24/5. This misalignment is the source of great frustration.
Coming to a weekend and waiting 2 full days is an awful a lot of time, and time is your most critical resource.
You cannot change other pulses; neither can you change yours, so the best thing to do is to plan activities that are input-free: write a document, code, debug, plan or write a blog. One blog post suggestion – why you hate startup weekends.
Despite what I wrote yesterday about my reservations regarding the Google TV, I do believe it can emerge as a great TV platform. But it need to focus more on what makes an application to be good on TV and less on bringing the web to the TV .
A good stand alone application (not widget) for TV must be:
Have TV optimized interface and TV only features
Content discovery is for dummies (ideally – content is already discovered and arranged when you sit in front of the TV)
Not requires text input (or it is limited to a bare minimum)
Entertaining
Video rich
Clickless
Highly personalized
Have multiple family members configurations with a single 2 or 3 digits code if needed
Example of good TV application is Netflix Watch Instantly that comes on one of the Netflix enabled devices. Everything about it is just right and meets all the criteria above.
Optimizing web site for TV isn’t enough. Take a look at YouTube. On a computer or mobile screens YouTube is the king and almost everything is right about it. But for TV it would need more than just optimization such as XL version of the site .
A peek at nowmov gives an idea of how different and better a TV-ready version of the YouTube might be. Definitely it is not an optimization of the YouTube site, but rather taking the YouTube content and presenting it completely differently, making the whole experience really entertaining and clickless. While I wouldn’t mind more personalization in the nowmov along with constant learning of my viewing tastes to make it even better for me, the idea is great and portable to the TV screen.
There is a whole set of applications that people try to port to TV. Think about status update on one of your social networking sites. What would be your first reaction when there is a message that your friend has a birthday? Right, writing him “Happy birthday to you! Wish you all the best”. No problem, sure, but wait, where is the remote, how on earth it got under the couch? Heck, why it does not write? Oh, no, I misspelled “birthday”, all over again… Not sure many people would do it on TV; probably most will retreat to the phones or laptops, which defeats the whole purpose of having this application on the TV.
People care less about the software platform on the TV but about what applications they have on it and how well these applications are adopted for the TV screen. Not every good web application will automatically be a good TV application.
When we sit in from of a computer, the most important questions are “what” and “where”. But when we finally relax on a couch to watch some TV, we usually would have an idea of what we want to watch, and the most important question will be “how”. Thus the search is not the most important thing for the TV.
Unlike “what and “where” the “how” question is mostly application specific (look at Netflix, YouTube XL and nowmov). If Google TV will leverage their strength in helping to solve the “How” it can be a winning proposition for consumers.
Google is in a best position in the world to create a TV platform that can address the right issues of creating a good native TV application. With its level of personalization, knowledge of what and how we do it might offer to applications developers something that other platforms will never be able to do.
This week was very rich for the TV world. It started with GigaOm report about how fast TV apps market will explode and continued with Google I/O conference announcements of Google TV. And I don’t buy both.
What Google Ignores with Google TV
Let me start with a statement – Web does not make sense on TV. I know - it’s quite an opposite of what Google says. It’s been proven times again and again – first with the WebTV, than with HTPCs. While you can always find a bunch of enthusiasts that will adopt whatever new cool thing is, it will be difficult to convince the rest of the world that Web-on-TV makes sense, as they denied it in the last 15 years.
How often and for how long would you want to work with your remote? Just for the sake of exercise, take any remote and try to type an imaginary text (even with your TV turned off) – will you still be in that comfortable lean back, foot on the table position?
Nobody can beat Google in the search, neither on computer nor on mobile. And in both areas search is the king for everything. It’s just different environment with completely different requirements and habits.
Typing in a search box on the TV oftentimes requires several additional searches:
Search for the remote (under the couch, on the TV stand, in hands of the kid, under your butt, on the kitchen counter because it was on the tray)
Search for the paper towel or napkin to wipe off this sandwich oil from the fingers (you do eat in front of the TV, don’t you?)
Search for the person who will go and fetch the remote (from wherever it is found) and is also ok or comfortable with all this clicking on it
Search for the reading glasses to be able to find the right buttons. It’s different to push the next channel, volume or even digits on the keypad than to type on the small full QWERTY remote.
Web TV failed not because it wasn’t a good product , but because people really weren’t bought into this “better” web on TV concept. Don’t do better web for TV. Do what makes sense on TV.
General web does not make sense, specific applications designed for consumption on the TV do.
And that only one aspect of how difficult is to people to adopt web-on-TV concept, without even considering the whole complexity of the ecosystem and other powerful players in the field and their stakes (operators, studios, content providers, manufactures, retailers, middleware and chipset vendors, ISPs, etc.).
That’s why I believe this new initiative of Google TV will have a hard time to succeed.
TV Apps Market – how big the opportunity is?
3 days ago GigaOm published their report on TV applications, TV Apps: Evolution from Novelty to Mainstream. In particular, they predicted that TV apps market will grow to almost $2B in the 4 year from virtually zero this year (estimated sales in 2010 are $10M).
While I love GigaOm for their excellent content, this one just didn’t fit well. That growth is a huge bet. First, it does not make sense from the perspective of the whole ecosystem. While connected TVs are really a cool thing and seems to be an industry direction, in order to achieve these numbers 4 things should happen first:
These TVs should be manufactured with more than few default applications preloaded to them
These TVs should be sold to the consumers
The right set of right applications should be developed
These consumers should decide whether to (1) use these applications and (2) pay for them
While (3) and (4) seem obvious, in a context of the TV they have a different meaning, which I will explore later.
The same GigaOm reported just 4 month ago that the Apple AppStore generates about $250M a month, making it $3B a year. Comparing the whole ecosystem for apps on iPhone, Apple brand, existing app market before the emergence of the Apple, globalization of the iPhone, and most importantly, a perfect sense for mobile applications, it makes it a little stretching to assume the TV apps market is in the same ground field. This is my quick sanity check for this prediction.
What Applications Are For TV?
Being in the TV applications space for the last few years, I’m familiar with many solutions and technologies related to the field, from widgets to specific applications and devices. Playing with many of them, I developed a simple set of criteria to decide whether an application is a good fit or not.
I’m on Facebook, and many of my friends are on in too. When I decided to join, I sort of told myself that whatever I want to share with general public would be there, and if something I want to keep private I just will not publish it on the Facebook.
Facebook “friends” come and go. Not every friend there is my real friend. Some are friends, some are just interesting online personas that I befriended there because I like their content, but whom I never met in person.
How much private information I want to share with such people, or even with many people that I know and used to either work or hang out? Well, generally it would not much beyond already known information.
I post, share, like, befriend, comment, follow, become fan and do whatever I do on Facebook and it is clear that any key stroke or mouse click I made aren’t private anymore.
I’m there because I want to be there, because my friends are there and because I like seeing their updates, posts or stuff they find interesting and sometimes I comment or re-share. And eventually all this might to be open.
But this is my decision and when I decided to join Facebook I knew that whatever I put there one way or another is public. The old proverb says that if more than two people know a secret it’s not a secret anymore.
We at eMazeU are big believers in a need to keep some things privately or to share them only with a close circle of people (of course this applies mostly to videosharing and photosharing, as this is a content of eMazeU). That’s how eMazeU works and what we promote extensively. Read our blog post about privacy or our list of benefits our solution brings and one of which is complete privacy of shared content.
There are many ways to keep things private if you want, Facebook just isn’t one of them and never been. But isn’t that one of the things we actually like in Facebook?
We are launching eMazeU DivvyTV – http://www.eMazeU.com/product. Last week was among the most sleepless weeks in a very long time. But also it was filled with a lot of great fun.
We are launching just in time for the Mother’s Day, almost at the 90th minute (if you know the soccer term), and hope our customers will have a chance to buy the DivvyTV for their moms.
eMazeU DivvyTV is really a simple video mailbox on TV, and everyone feels comfortable using it. With eMazeU DivvyTV you will enjoy friends and family videos and photos sent directly to your TV, and have real-life experience seeing your loved ones so close up. Check out the movie.
Hope you enjoy the clip, browse the site and tell us what you think. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.
Every brand today needs to be on Twitter. Whether it's you, your business or your company.
I do not have an account yet, and soon plan to open. Despite that, I could claim leadership in some of the Twitter categories: I have the world youngest and most devoted Twitter follower. Judge yourself.
Last Friday was significant day in eMazeU history. We put our first version of the site online (http://www.emazeu.com/) to start exposure to search engines,allow pre-registration and receive feedbacks earlier on before official start of sales.
The product can always be better – more features, more robust, etc. But our current beta users really love it in its first version. It stands out in its simplicity – I believe this is one of the easiest ways to enjoy your friends and family content on your TV. So, what might be a reason not to start selling it? This realization occurred to me later than it should. We could start real sales few months ago. But better late than never…
With eMazeU you receive your friends and family videos and photos directly on your TV, without connecting in to the computer. Our product creates a new level of video sharing experience. There is no more fun to watch your and your friends and family videos than on your TV. And it has the easiest interface both for sharers and for receivers. So easy that my parents are using it without any problem, and they aren’t best friends with technology (http://igorchirashnya.blogspot.com/2010/02/to-make-your-parents-happy-do-startup.html).
In my family we use eMazeU in two ways: first we have eMazeU device connected to our TV. All my friends and family send their videos and photos directly to our TV. The experience is just great – you cannot even compare to what you have on a PC. We used to receive a lot of Picasa and Flickr albums, but mostly we watched them as thumbnails: who has patience to view somebody’s vacation?
But now we are hypnotized by the big TV screen when we receive their content, we feel them and their moments as close to the reality as it possibly might be. We watch their content again and again; it is like watching a movie with actors you personally know, love and care of.
And many of our friends and family have our product as well, and we share tons of our videos and photos with them directly to their TVs. No more YouTube, FlipShare, Picasa. Yes, these all are great products. But once it comes to the simplicity of sharing and watching from one end, to the great lifelike TV size experience from the other – eMazeU stands out.
Our goal was to create the most simple and convenient way to share videos and photos with people you care about, let them enjoy our videos in their living rooms, on their big screen TVs. I hope we succeeded to create such product. That’s what our current users tell us.
Please visit us at http://www.eMazeU.com. The site is still under construction, but you can pre-register and we will notify you when sales will start. The product itself is ready and the only thing that is left is to complete the site, which we plan to do in the next few weeks.
And of course, any suggestion and ideas are welcome and much appreciated!
Yesterday I had an interesting discussion about connected-TVs which make big news these days, and internet applications for them. I argued that while Facebook and Twitter sell the TV in stores, actual using them makes less sense, since posting comments to status updates, news feeds, photo and video sharing is quite difficult due to an awkward TV text input, and this is among most important features of such apps.
Agree, my business partner said, I also don’t want to show my Facebook in the living room. There is a lot of stuff on it that I prefer to keep away from the family’s eyes. If one of my friends published something inappropriate, I would rather try to avoid sharing it with my family, which is a more difficult on a TV than on laptop.
This instantly reminded me my personal experience that I shared with him. I’m a friend on the Facebook with some LA entrepreneur who happened to also be a super model. She is shockingly beautiful, exactly what you would expect from an LA model.
As part of our product we developed connectivity to the Facebook. It works quite simple – you choose your friends and our application sends their content to your eMazeU-enabled device, so you would be able to watch their photo albums directly on your TV without a need to log-in to the Facebook.
One day I was testing the application and chosen few names from the list of my Facebook friends. Her name was on top as it starts with “A”, and I checked her. Surely enough she had an amazing swimsuit album which went directly to my TV. I was looking at the server logs to see that everything was working correctly, not expecting that innocent “Photo 1” till “Photo 86”, as it was recorded, would require some explanation later.
When my wife came home, she went directly to the TV because “New Content Arrived” lights were on, and she watched the whole bikini album of 86 astonishing pictures. A serious explanation was in due. Showing server logs seemed too complicated at the moment, so I improvised.
”Honey, we develop a new service on the TV using our platform: one click purchase. As you can see, while watching a new collection of goods, swimsuits in this case, you can order any garment you want with just one click. Which one do you like, dear?” Not sure she bought it, but the evening was saved.
Indeed, sometimes it is better to enjoy your Facebook in a quiet solitude, even if your wife has a great sense of humor.
Prior to our move to the States, my sister installed a computer at my parents’ home to enable our communication with them. After several sessions my mom was able to read emails and my sister gave up on any attempt to teach her to reply as well. But that was all right as long as Mom could open pictures.
Sometimes she needed an urgent support from my sister (surely enough, usually very late in the evening) because she “didn’t do anything and it all disappeared”. With the time we learned that “it all disappeared” meant she accidently clicked on a minimize button and “all disappeared” indeed. We were able to identify most common Windows misbehaviors, such as sudden disappearances of the browser, text turned to be red with no reason, shutting down at once, inaudible sound , frozen arrow and how to deal with “You got upgraded” message. The most dangerous of all were “Yes” or “No” types of questions that tended to appear from time to time. A choice between these two is a nightmare for a Jewish mom.
Thanks god, my sister and brother-in-law have high level of commitment to the customer service. If it was on me, I would already drop this account for good. However, at this point I was not concerned at all since all this tech support had happened 10 time zones away and I only enjoyed the end result.
But soon it wasn’t enough for my parents. They wanted to see my kids live. That’s where my sister dropped a bomb: “Skype”! I was frightened to even think of going this path as immediately I realized that I would not be able to benefit anymore from my time difference and going Skype would inevitably move me to the first line of support.
As hilarious as it is, I will spare every detail of how it went, but till today my every Skype session with the parents starts with the call over a landline. “-Mom, why on the earth you closed the Skype? -What are you talking about? I never close the Skype! I only unplugged the computer.”
So I was in a frantic need to find a better solution, something that works without a computer and could be operated by my parents. That’s how my first idea of eMazeU occurred to me. Initially it was a wireless digital video camera with extremely simple channel based interface that can capture, receive and play videos. So off we went with this idea about two years ago. We worked hard on it but it didn’t really fly. One of the mistakes I made was to completely dismiss smart phones as a viable platform for that, and it took a while to realize that. Good thing we learned a lot.
While technical specifications of the product are not important anymore, it helped to define our current product. We create a personal channel to enable our customers to receive their content directly on the TV. Soon the product will be available here: www.eMazeU.com.
My mom is happy now. She uses our beta product and does not require a customer support anymore. I am a good son after all.
I’m running a startup. Today, at February 21, 2010 it’s almost 2 years since I started to work on it. No salary, no funding, ups and downs on hourly basis, work from home, thinking of impossible, disappointments and nerves, ignoring the facts and reasoning, and much more. There are probably millions of reasons why you should stop doing a startup. Yet, this is most revealing experience I ever had.
I still do not know when we will be funded and of course, have no idea whether my company will be a success story or not. Of course, I believe it will be a huge success (otherwise why doing this), but you know the statistics and odds. Without this belief you better not even start.
When you start a company, especially if this is your first time, you have no idea what to expect, not the obstacles you’ll have on your way, not the end result. You even do not know what the desired end result is. You want to succeed, but hell, no idea what does this mean.
It is very nice to read the stories of Google, Apple, Intel or Microsoft founders after their success happened. But what about learning the lessons when history did not happen yet? When you do not have a desired outcome and thus need to judge events and actions without knowing and understanding their long term impact on a venture?
So I decided to start writing a blog about my startup when it actually happens. I plan to provide my perspective on what we are doing, what are ups and downs, will try to analyze my industry and competitors, and try to share my thoughts on general topics that I deem relevant. All somehow will be connected to my startup.
I read somewhere that running a startup is that much fun as riding a rollercoaster. I would add that with rollercoaster your guts might fail you from time to time, but you will be successfully delivered to the finish line, while with a startup it’s not guaranteed. So a better comparison for me would be a rollercoaster where you are a driver and there is no safety there.
You might fasten your seat belts, but not sure it will help – this is my first ever drive. Hope to get there safely.
