October 29, 2009 · 1 Comment
Summary: Stay away from Classmates.com and do not fall for any of their tricks to get you to sign-up as a gold member.
Last year I upgraded my Classmates.com subscription from the free one to the paid one simply to see what the difference was for paid members. As we were building the VendorCity service and business model, it was useful to see freemium models from other services.
It was immediately apparent that the subscription was a waste of money. No one was actively using it and the additional features were useless.
Today, without any warning or notice from Classmates.com, I received a $39 bill on my credit card. Apparently, when you sign-up, there is so small TOS that states they will enable automatic annual billing. However, did they mention they would do it without any warning or option out? Of course not, because they are already going out of business and are using nearly illegal tactics to try to keep cash flowing.
I called Classmates.com and they refused to refund the money so I am contacting my credit card company to dispute the charge. I’ll follow-up when I get a resolution one way or another.
So, my suggestion to you is simply stay away from Classmates.com. They are dying and dying companies do desperatethings.
Categories: Scams
Tagged: classmates, classmates.com, high school, scam, social networking site
Most people in the entrepreneurial world feel that startups succeed or fail based upon the quality of the team running the show and their ability to handle the challenges that come their way. It’s not the idea, or the industry, or the marketing plan — it’s THE TEAM.
I subscribe to this philosophy and firmly believe that, for the vast majority of startups, it really does come down to execution. My definition of execution relies upon the unofficial Marine motto: time to improvise, adapt, and overcome.
All startups must adapt or fail
The reality is that very few startups ever do exactly what they set out to do. You must be prepared to improvise, adapt, and overcome your obstacles or you won’t find acceptance in the marketplace.
So, to all the current and future entrepreneurs out there, remember this: you are only as good as your ability to handle the unknown.
Improvise and do whatever it takes to get things done, adapt to the changing landscape and marketplace, and you will be in a position to overcome your fears and your competitors.
Categories: Entrepreneur
Tagged: adapt, Entrepreneur, execution, improvise, overcome, startup, startups, tips
I was reminded last week how critical it is to step back and reassess difficult or challenging situations when a simple technology problem at home took far too long to resolve. This is true for your personal relationships, family life, and, most certainly, any efforts to build and run a startup.
What drove home this reminder was the fact that after switching to Comcast phone service at home, I could not get the new voicemail system to work right. No matter what we did, it picked up after 2 rings, had a default message despite recording many new ones, and our test voice messages weren’t there. Comcast worked on it, I worked on it, and ultimately, to make a long story short, they asked me to confirm whether or not our home answering machine was picking up before the Comcast voicemail. The answer was no, it was not…but in truth, it was.
Our home answering machine was turned off and clearly not picking up. However, what both the installer and I had not noticed was that when he added the new phone service, he had connected a second phone in the basement that apparently had a digital answering machine and it was the culprit.
Why share this story? Besides showing how even technology people can be flummoxed by relatively simple gadgets, it highlights how critical it is to step back and look at things from a thirty-thousand foot view. I was so certain that the problem was on their end, I never bothered to reassess the situation and see if it could have been anything else.
When someone is absolutely certain about something in their business (their model, their marketing, their product), that “certainty” becomes a blind spot that will most often lead to failure. I’ve learned a lot over the past 15 years building and running companies and I would have to say that this is one of the most important things I and other entrepreneurs need to remember.
It is okay to be passionate and steadfast in your beliefs, but you must remember to constantly step back and view the big picture; otherwise, all too often, you are likely to miss the forest for the trees.
Categories: Entrepreneur
Tagged: big picture, Entrepreneur, startup
LinkedIn is greedy. They work hard to get you to upgrade to a premium account and then make it nearly impossible for you to downgrade back to the free version.
They intentionally hide the steps to downgrade, make those steps as manual as possible, and don’t remind you that you are paying for their premium services. All together, this clearly shows a pattern of intentional behavior designed specifically to keep you paying for their service and to discourage you from downgrading to the free service when you realize the premium services are not worth the money.
A few highlights:
- Upgrading to premium account is extremely simple and painless. They clearly know how to design a sign-up process effectively.
- Once upgraded, there is no clear method to downgrade your account.
- There is absolutely nowhere within your account settings or emails you get from LinkedIn that provides details of how to cancel the premium service.
- They charge you in advance and require you to pay for the full 30 days even if you want to cancel immediately.
- There are no emails sent out to remind you of your monthly premium subscription.
Let me take you through the sign-up and cancellation process. You can then come to your own conclusions.
Sign-up is a cake (click to see a larger version):
Here are the “terms” you agree to during the sign-up process. This is the only place now or later that you are told how to cancel:
Keep reading →
Categories: LinkedIn · networking
Tagged: bad business, bad user experience, greedy, LinkedIn, networking
Sometimes, you come across little things that really surprise you. Today I discovered Google Grants, a Google program which provides non-profits with up to $10,000 (that’s right, ten thousand dollars) of free advertising each month. Beg, borrow, or steal someone with some technical and/or marketing experience to get this setup for your non-profit because, if done right, it can be the best money you never had to spend.
Here are some examples of feedback from non-profits who have taken advantage of Google Grants:
It’s not often that you see a chance like this so I’d suggest you sign-up today!
Categories: Non-profits
Tagged: google, grant, non-profit
As a technology entrepreneur, change is a part of who I am and what I breathe every day. I generally get excited when the services I use update their interface because I consider it part of the value of today’s hosted site. Great new features or interfaces become available without having to do anythign at all.
So, when facebook rolled out their latest changes, I understood some of the reasons why they did it and where they are going with the concept. However, someone clearly dropped the ball and didn’t do enough real-life user testing as they:
- dropped some very important features most users love
- made the life stream significantly more cluttered and redundant then necessary.
Here’s one example of a great feature that was removed from this SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE: you no longer see who your friends are adding as new friends on the home page. That was one of the most interesting things I looked for every day.
Secondly, I am no longer using Facebook as much as I was because the new twitter-like social timeline is broken with this new design. Here are two screenshots highlighting why I am so frustrated with the new design (click to see larger versions):
Screenshot showing repeated entries from same person for same gift
Second screenshot of friend giving lava lamps to other friends
So, if Facebook adds some of those lost features back and combines actions like the above back into a single entry, I am completely happy to accept the changes. Until then, I am going to be using facebook a lot less every day and will constantly be a little frustrated with their offering.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE NEW DESIGN? What do you LIKE and what do you HATE? Add your comments below.
Categories: facebook · networking · user interface
Disclaimer: My company was involved in the software design / interface for the iRobot ConnectR product.
I love having a pool but one of the things that I have never been particularly interested in, or honestly, very good at, is cleaning it. When we first bought the house 10 years ago, we looked into a pool robot but most of the reviews were very, very bad. However, this past summer, I decided to take a look at the market again and found some very good reviews on the iRobot pool cleaners. Based upon my research, the best choice for our pool was the iRobot Verro 500 PowerScrub.
Overall first impressions are that this is an amazing product. It came pretty much all set to go and that is exactly what it did. I let it run without doing much and then I brushed the floor and let it run again. The pool has never been so clean and using it was a snap.
From a consumer point of view, the only gotcha was that the power connection from the robot to their power supply was hard to connect properly. But other than that, I would say that this device, though expensive, is a homerun. I’ll follow-up after I’ve used it for a month but it was simple to use, extremely effective, and will save on electricity, pool pump, filter, chemicals, and water refilling. I may try do a ROI on it, but, it is hard to calculate the pleasure of seeing and using a sparkling clean pool.
Categories: Gadgets
Tagged: cleaning, Gadgets, irobot, pool, robot
Earlier this week, I came across this great article by Roger Ehrenberg:
It is definitely one of the most objective and well-written startup post mortems I have read by a member of the actual team. His list of Seven Deadly Sins, which in my opinion is not complete but a great list nonetheless, consists of:
- The lack of a single, “the buck stops here” leader until too late in the game
- No separation between the technology organization and the product organization
- Too much PR, too early
- Too much money
- Not close enough to the customer
- Slow to adapt to market reality
- Disagreement on strategy both within the Company and with the Board
Now, depending upon the situation, some of those may or may not hold true for all startups, but I would like to highlight the first one “the buck stops here” along with “not close enough to the customer”. You need a strong leader who can come to final decisions and be responsible for them (but be ready to change as the market or situation requires) and you also need to truly get in bed with your customers. Now, by that, I don’t mean you need to cowtail to each and every whim (especially on the features side) but you do need to truly understand their pain and come up with a solution that directly addresses it.
I want to send out my thanks to Roger for sharing his insight into the problems and struggles at Monitor110. It is great to see others willing share their real-life experiences building startups and doing it without placing blame all around. That’s a hard thing for most people to do and I applaud those that are able to successfully accomplish it.
Categories: Entrepreneur
Tagged: blame, growing, learning, lists, post mortem, startups
Topify is a great new service
