Augmented Reality. Better Than Real Reality (well, not yet!)

Hello all, hope your day is going well. Mine? Thanks for asking. It is great. So one thing that has been on my mind for sometime is Augmented Reality.

For those that aren't familiar with this, I really like how Robin Wauters at Techcrunch describes it:

... basically it’s the placement of a digital layer of information on top of a real-life view of the world around you, as seen through e.g. a mobile phone’s camera lens. Using augmented reality, you could be using your smartphone to glance around the main square of a city you’re visiting and get up-to-date information about nearby restaurants, ATMs, real estate offers, and more on-screen, bolted on top of what you’d be seeing if you weren’t looking through the lens.

I like to think of it as one (small) step closer to being a total virtual reality setting, however you are still based in real reality (i.e. walking around in the real world, but seeing virtual things combined with real world things).

There are several companies and applications that are already making some waves in this space. Layar is the one that comes to my mind. Another is the Urbanspoon iPhone application. With it, you hold up your iPhone and it will overlay aggregated restaurant approval rating:

The main short-comings in the fledgling augmented reality industry:

• Crappy viewing methods
• No killer-app yet

Currently, the best way that I can tell for utilizing an augmented reality "layer" is by opening an application on your mobile device (iPhone, crackBerry, etc.) and then holding it up so the camera / compass takes in what it is being pointed at. The software on the device renders the image received from the camera plus adds the request information on top of the image (for example, if you are looking at a construction site, the application could retrieve information of the up coming building that will be in the now empty lot and render it on the screen, as if it were there).

This delivery method is silly. I do not want to go around holding up my phone and viewing it through a little screen. Worse, you are not immersed in your new, layered world. You are only getting an extremely small sneak peak of this altered reality. What would be better?

What if you had a set of glasses that you could plug into your phone that could send / receive information and lightly overlay the rendering data to the glasses? Much like a "Heads Up Display" used in fighter jets and some car windshields. You would now have a hands free device that displays the request information in a much more elegant manner and you can experience the augmented reality more seamlessly.

Under this set up, the phone is the data receiver / sender, the application on the mobile device is the processor, the application it is sending / receiving data to / from is the data source, and the glasses are the display. Creating such a product would be quite expensive and take excessive R&D, so without a large market to pull down revenue from, there is little incentive to venture into it (too much perceived risk, not enough perceived reward). This brings me to my second point.

All the applications I've seen that augment reality are cool, but that's about as much praise as I'd give them. There is no really, really compelling application that would significantly improve my life and make me want to part with my hard earned dollars. Showing me who and where people are around me that recently submitted Tweets? Displaying a pin-point on a restaurant I'm looking at and showing me a review? Booooo.

I don't know what the game changing application would be (if I had an idea, I wouldn't be writing this post, I'd be trying to build it!), but fine, I'll take a guess. I think it could be a game. Yes, a game.

Imagine it! People go out and play paintball and laser tag. I pay $50 per year to play Halo 3 against other people from around the world. What if you could be playing a real life game in a large structure or enclosed area, but instead of shooting your friends with balls of paint or firing "lasers" at them you are fighting against "virtual" enemies, or aliens, or whatever? What if you could be in a field with a group of friends in real life. All of you are wearing the aforementioned glasses for visual augmented reality, a head set for communication with your team and, more importantly, for *audio* augmented reality (which would be in step with the visual augmented reality), and with a "gun" that is also synched with the rest of the whole system. All of a sudden a space ship screams in from above, extra-terrestrial guns blazing? And then zombies come sprinting at you from the tree line? You and your friends must act as a team and defend your area and fend them off!

I'd pay for that.

Male / Female + Solution

Math question:

"In a country in which people only want boys, every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?"

Please post your solution + answer in the comments. GO!


----- Solution -----

Thank you to all that emailed me and posted in the comments! The first responder with the correct answer was Gary H., however, he volunteered to disqualify himself because he had seen the question before (what a noble man!).

The winner is Paul R. A case of Snuggies is on it's way to you as your prize.

Honorable mention goes out to Dan D and Adam C. No, no honorable mention goes to Bad Dinosaur, he didn't even play.

Here it is: we assume that the probabilities of having a boy vs girl is 50%. Next, assume there are N families, so there will be N boys at the end (because the families keep going until they have a boy. N families. N boys). From the girl side, we can see the following:

round 1: N/2 have a boy and stop, N/2 have a girl, so N/2 girls so far
round 2: N/2 families left, 50% have a girl, so N/4 (0.5*N/2 = N/4)
round 3: N/4 families left, 50% have a girl, so N/8 (0.5*N/4 = N/8)

You get the idea. There will be an "infinite" sum equal to:

N/2 + N/4 + N/8 ... N / infinity = N

Note: this follows from Series basics (read more here).

So number of boys equals N, and number of girls equals N, the ratio is N:N or 1:1

The Monte Carlo simulation supports these findings (thanks to Paul R. for the lovely ruby code):
Example output:

Family problem, 1000000 trials:

997496 girls, 1000000 boys
1.997496 children per family
0.997496 girls per boy


#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# usage: ./family.rb [trials]

# Family problem, 1000000 trials:
#
# 997496 girls, 1000000 boys
# 1.997496 children per family
# 0.997496 girls per boy
#
# Ran in 15.508096s

class Array
  def rand # A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
    self[(length*Kernel.rand).floor]
  end
end

class Family
  def initialize(complete = true)
    @children = { :boy => 0, :girl => 0 }
    complete! if complete
  end
  
  def boys
    @children[:boy]
  end
  
  def girls
    @children[:girl]
  end
  
  def have_child!
    @children[[:boy, :girl].rand] += 1
  end
  
  def complete!
    have_child! until complete?
  end
  
  def complete?
    boys == 1
  end
end

iterations = if ARGV.length > 0
               ARGV[0].to_i
             else
               1000
             end

puts "Family problem, #{iterations} trials:"

started = Time.new

children = { :boys => 0, :girls => 0 }
iterations.times do
  f = Family.new
  children[:boys]  += f.boys
  children[:girls] += f.girls
end

family_size = (children[:boys] + children[:girls]).to_f / iterations
ratio = children[:girls].to_f / children[:boys]

elapsed = Time.new - started

puts
puts "#{children[:girls]} girls, #{children[:boys]} boys"
puts "#{family_size} children per family"
puts "#{ratio} girls per boy"
puts
puts "Ran in #{elapsed}s"

Roller Coaster

I recently went on a California extravaganza, which began in the LA area and meandered up the PCH to San Francisco, stopping in at Carmel-by-the-sea (official name!) and the Red Wood Forest. Here is a picture of me in San Fran with some guy leaning up against me.


While I was in SF (that's what I'm calling it, hope it sticks) being whisked around by a cab I realized riding in a cab in San Fran is exactly like being on a roller coaster at an amusement park. Following this mental breakthrough, I started to raise my hands above my head and yell with glee as we drove down some very steep roads and made the "tick-tick-tick" noise of our taxi-coaster being pulled up by an imaginary chain lift as we climbed seemingly vertical inclines. The taxi drive did not make this mental connection, unfortunately, and refused to take part.

During this elevation-exploration I began to have thoughts about my experience with our start-up so far. Some days you are top dog and can do no wrong; while others look utterly hopeless and you wish someone had created a word that meant "lower than rock bottom" because you would use it liberally! A small company is an emotional roller coaster and learning how to manage this is paramount.


One thing our start-up has been focused on recently is sales and marketing. We have the idea, we put together the initial team, we built a product prototype, we defined our business model, and (in my mind, most importantly) we found paying members and established proof of concept. Don't get too excited in Good Dinosaur nation - when I say paying members I'm talking < 10. Our team agreed, what we need now is to improve our reach.

Sales and marketing can be difficult by itself. Selling and marketing a somewhat innovative or industry divergent product or service can be really difficult and can stick your start-up roller coaster in those low points quickly.

It is very easy to fall into a negative feedback loop when selling. For example, you have a bad sales call, which causes you to question your start-ups potential, which causes you to pitch poorly next time around, which causes even more panicky feelings, which causes your team to get into arguments, which leads to worse sales meetings, more in-fighting, yelling, screaming and ... OH CRAP WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?


Now you are left with nothing but sadness and frustration, and probably no more start-up.

So, my recommendation, diversify your focus! It works for investing! It can work for your brain. Concentrating solely on Sales and Marketing yields the same pitfalls as focusing solely on Product Development or Capital Raising or any one thing. Budget your time accordingly, or make a "cycled schedule" where you do one sales and marketing action, one product development task, one business development oriented item, and one capital raising action. Only after you complete the whole cycle can you move back to the beginning.

For example, I was getting frustrated with our ability to find the right people to speak with, so I took a break and began making progress on our capital raising efforts by starting to collect a blog roll of authors that either own or work at possible seed investors. I wasn't seeing success during sales efforts, so I put the phone away, and jumped on the web in search of our next possible partner, advisor, or investor. I could have also gone and wrote some code. Or worked on updating our business plan. Or whatever else needed to be done. You get the idea.

I guess the main premise here is that you will have a lot of frustrations, let downs, and difficulties with any venture. Remember to not keep smashing your head against a wall that just won't move at the moment. Taking a step back can help you discover a way around the obstacle and preserve your dome-piece's structural integrity. Win, win.

At the end of the day, handling the roller coaster of emotions that come about at a small company is a required skill. If things get really bad and you find yourself burnt out, take a vacation! I hear California is lovely :)

No One Cares About Your Stupid Start-up, Stupid

How do you get those that should care about your company to actually care?

One of the bigger frustrations a new company can likely run into is generating awareness and adoption of their product. This reality can come as quite a surprise to a would-be entrepreneur because you mainly hear about the success stories: for example, thefacebook.com launched at Harvard and quickly spread around the Ivy League like a California wildfire). This survivor bias can skew expectations concerning the effort, creativity, and capital that likely needs to be expended to gain initial (and future) customers.

What are some ways that you can increase your customer base and get your business out of the "start-up" classification and into the "small business" category?

My friend (no, not Bad Dinosaur, he is just awful) and I were brainstorming how to overcome this hurdle. We've seen a positive member response from virtually all that have come across our start-up's service. However, our biggest challenge has been figuring out viable ways to reach our desired audience. Some of the avenues we thought would be home runs have turned out more like an infield pop-fly with bases loaded, 2 outs. Others that seemed silly to even pursue paid big dividends.

The following few seemed most viable. Please critique, warn against, or suggest others in the comments section:

• Provide complimentary products - if your initial product or service is a bit avant-garde or depends on gaining a critical member count, provide complimentary products that anyone can use and do not depend on the number of other users


• Outsourced marketing campaigns - these can be tricky and capital intensive. We have talked about everything from hiring staff and paying up front salaries with commission to running targeted affiliate programs where the top performer either receives a cash bonus or (and this might be a little nutty) is awarded a non-voting equity share in the company


• Internally run marketing campaigns - basically the same as "Outsourced" but run by us. This saves on capital expenditures but takes away resources from all other operations


• Pursue partnership with a more established company - obvious downsides are loss of ownership and independence

Epiphany

As I've mentioned previously to the Good Dinosaur collective, I'm managing a startup and came to the realization that conceptualizing and creating the product was just the beginning in a ventures life span. I was starting to feel like I had been dropped into a large, well grown forest and told that there was a treasure chest I needed to find. And that was it. No further guidance, no hints, no nothing. In short, I was feeling a bit lost.

Well, as fate would have it, I was discussing my conundrum with a friend of mine (no, not Bad Dinosaur, we are certainly not friends! He broke my web page (look at the top right)!) and he pointed me towards The Four Steps To The Epiphany, by UCLA-Anderson professor and serial entrepreneur Steve Blank


Many startups focus all too intently on developing their idea and their product, which is to be expected and which I am certainly guilty of. However, once their vision has been refined and polished and their product has been built, now what? You start to market and sell, hoping that you can find someone who likes what you've built and, more importantly, will pay for it. This can lead to those "lost" feelings I mentioned before. You just completed creating this great new toy that does all this wonderful stuff, but have no idea who, if anyone, wants it.

Blank identifies this linear process of Product Development followed by Sales and Marketing as a systematic error that is repeated over and over again and usually results in a startup's failure.


Steve promotes the concept of "Customer Development," which advises you to get out of the lab and into the field to discover customers that find your concept compelling and, more importantly, would be willing to pay for it (once it's complete, that is). This concept is not rocket science, but believe me, very rarely practiced.

By receiving constant feedback from customers you can better guide your Product Development in real time, or, if you cannot find interested customers, decide if your new wiz-bang idea should be ditched.



This will leave you with more time and resources to pursue something more worthwhile.

One item of notice about this book: Steve definitely practices what he preaches. In an effort to discover his early adopters and find if his product is sellable, he released a "beta" version and sat back to see how it was received (this is my guess, perhaps he just has an awful editor). So while you will find great advice and guidance, you will also come across spelling mitsakes, grammar issues, clip-art diagrams, and two, count 'em, two Chapter 3's (but sadly no Chapter 4).

Aside from that, Steve Blank has great advice: find your idea, refine it, begin to develop it AND your customers at the same time right from the start. You will be a happier entrepreneur in the end.

On Hedge Funds

OK kiddies, time to discuss business, but I promise this post will quickly degenerate into something a bit more light-hearted.

As some of you out there in the Good Dinosaur readership world (now with a Facebook Group and a Facebook Page. What's the difference, you ask? Who knows! Join / Fan them both!) I've ventured out and started a company. As mentioned in a previous post, I've experienced some struggles with getting the mish-mash of thoughts up in my head-space down into one of those so called “plans of business”, or for our Spanish readers, “plans de business.”

I've done some research on how to write a business plan and even found some services that offer a template you can drag and drop information into and, presto, instant business plan! While this would have be an easy solution, it did not seem like a great idea. After all, it is my company's business plan and my company, like a beautiful snow flake fluttering in the cool Vermont winter air, is unique from all others and should not, nay, cannot be expressed via a boiler plate document.

One article I've grown particularly fond of is the Harvard Business Review posting on How to Write A Great Business Plan. It describes the mindset to take and what to cover when writing a business plan:

• Describe the market you are entering
• Explain the opportunity that you are seeking to capture
• Illustrate how you will accomplish your vision
• Tell your readers who you and your team are

Quick, clean, and to the point! How do you like them apples?

Well, in my past employment-life I spent most of my days reading over business plans, so I wondered why I did not have a better grasp on how to conger these documents into existence. And then it hit me. All the business plans I'd viewed were for start-up hedge funds, and business plans for these companies are unique little beasts.

Lets see how a typical hedge fund business plan would be composed if we followed the HBS recommended method. Lets first layout the basics of our fictitious fund:

1. The Name. Select a name for our new fund, the more old-money sounding and urbane the better. Expensive vacation destinations are a good choice, as are street names, or city locations. Make sure to add “Capital” to the end!

Example. Lincoln Square Capital, LLC

2. The Logo. Pick a logo that looks solid and sophisticated, and employs grey-scale (colors are for hippies, and hippies aren't skilled at managing money).

Example.

Ok! We are now set to move on to the rest of our business plan:

• The Market: Here we state the basics about the hedge fund industry. Really, all that is ever described is the overall size and who can invest.
  
  
  Example. The hedge fund market is large and expanding, quickly approaching $2 trillion in assets under management. Hedge funds are large, unregulated pools of capital that seek to invest in attractive opportunities and make the funds' investors a boat load of cash. The minimal investment in most hedge funds often begins at $500,000 so only rich people should really continue reading.


• The Opportunity: In this section we typically see a quick claim that through well disciplined investing, an investor in the fund stands to gain handsomely.
  
  
  Example. Please see the accompanying graphic to illustrate the opportunity presented by investing in Lincoln Square Capital, LLC:
  


• How we will do it: This section is pretty standard, the example below best depicts how this part is handled.
  
  
  Example. Please see the accompanying graphic to illustrate our investment technique:
  Thank you. Now give us money.


• Our Team: This is the most important section, but fortunately, follows a Mad Libs format and really only describes one person: the fund's founder. Let's all play along!
  
  1. Small investment bank name. Example: Morgan Stanley
  2. Trading-oriented job name. Example: Convertible Bonds Trader
  3. Better investment bank name. Example: Goldman Sachs
  4. Hedge fund name. Example: SailFish
  5. Number between 10-30. Example: 20
  6. Number between 1-1000. Example: 618
  7. Pick either “Park” or “Madison”. Example: Madison
  8. Ivy League college name. Example: Princeton University
  
  Now lets see how we did!
  
  
  Example. Jonathan Smith founded Lincoln Square Capital, LLC in 2009. Prior to founding Lincoln Square Capital, LLC, Jonathan worked at (1) Morgan Stanley as a (2) convertible bonds trader. After several impressive years of service he moved on to (3) Goldman Sachs. Next, Jonathan jumped to the prestigious hedge fund, (4) SailFish, where he achieved annualized returns of 25% (assumes (5) 20 times leverage).
  
  Seeking to capitalize on his unique talents and money management capabilities, Jonathan launched Lincoln Square Capital, LLC, headquartered at (6) 618 (7) Madison Avenue. The fund is currently accepting qualified investors.
  
  Jonathan is an esteemed alumni of (8) Princeton University and enjoys polo and wine.

As a bonus, stealthily posting a picture to a non-descriptive Flickr account that illustrates, in addition to the impressive credentials listed, that the fund manager might be related to The Most Interesting Man In The World always helps. Add an anonymous posting to Seeking Alpha, DealBreaker, or any other finance oriented website with a link to the aforementioned picture to generate greater interest in the fund.

Example.

Commenter #17: "Looks like Jonathan at Lincoln Square knows how to water ski"

And that's it! We are done! In short, a business plan for a hedge fund has little to it. The main product / service that gets the lion share of coverage in a typical business plan write-up is shrouded in secret. Like a magician, a fund manager will never divulge how his investment magic works. So the entire section on the service / product is encased in a "black box," leaving little else to cover.

Maybe I should forget this whole “regular business” stuff and just start a hedge fund? I already know how to market it.

CollegeJobConnect Beta

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