Colin Plamondon

Prioritization? Eh. A lot of company blogs yap on about the 'startup life' or some nonsense.

It's more a matter of resource allocation. 

So many hours, so many opportunities, so many things you can execute on at a time. At any given time there's usually one thing you can be doing that will double revenue or double user growth. There's a lot of things that won't. Anything that doesn't make a large impact isn't much worth doing, so you focus on the big ticket items. 

Now, in the process of constantly focusing on what doubles you next, you'll find some blind spots, sometimes publicly.

Yeah, turns out, you actually do need to thoroughly test releases before pushing them out to hundreds of thousands of people. Yup, you should approve in-app purchases before the app goes live. No, you probably shouldn't have an 'Unlock for $4.99.' button that reads 'Unlock...', because you went a couple characters over at the last minute (...my bad.).

Those are all easy fixes, though. A better pre-release checklist, a more thorough testing before releases.

The bigger thing is strategic- what's the way you double in the next six months? For us, it's never been executing on the plan that took us though the last six months. It's coming up with something that goes in a slightly different direction, with a slightly different product focus. It also has to be a sustainable focus- if you're a private company, if you aren't taking VC, if you're in it to build a lasting business--- well, Red Bull just isn't going to cut it. You need to be able to kick ass on a regular basis.

A plan isn't a plan unless it works in the worst case scenario- I take my most conservative estimate and cut it in half. If we can double with that, we'll be in damned good shape in six months. This means a lot of excel geekery and it means a lot of quick tests to see if the underlying numbers are feasible. But, if those early signs are good, if those small-scale allocations work out, then it's time to go full-throttle. That's when it's time to set the overarching goal and execute.

That's prioritization.

Not a list. Not a set of 'strategic possibilities'. No, it's a a vision, a runthrough in excel, some quick tests, and a full-throttle blast to increasing revenue. Sexy? No. Profitable? Hell yeah.

For some reason people don't call insurance companies to insure their expensive electronic stuff. As it happens, insurance companies are good at this stuff!

It costs me $42/year to insure a 13" Macbook Pro, an iPhone 3GS, and a travel scanner. That includes if I drop my laptop, if a guitar head falls directly on the harddrive (...), or if it's stolen on the subte. Anything- it's real honest to god insurance, not insurance, as long as nothing actually goes wrong'. 

The best part is how easy it is- just call the local branch to get a contact, at which point you'll be able to email back and forth for everything, with the annual payment being withdrawn directly out of your checking account.

Q: What else have you learned from Soros?

A: I've learned many things from him, but perhaps most significant is that it's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong. The few times that Soros has ever criticized me was when I was really right on the market and didn't maximize the opportunity. 

As an example, shortly after I had started working for Soros, I was bearish on the dollar and put on a large short position against the Deutsche mark. The position had started going in my favor and I felt rather proud of myself. Soros came into my office, and we talked about the trade.

'How big a position do you have?' he asked.

'One billion dollars,' I answered.

'You call that a position?' he said dismissingly. He encouraged me to double my position. I did, and the trade went dramatically further in our favor.

Soros has taught me that when you have tremendous conviction on a trade, you have to go for the jugular. It takes courage to be a pig. It takes courage to ride a profit with huge leverage. As far as Soros is concerned, when you're right on something, you can't own enough.

Although I was not at Soros Management at the time, I've heard that prior to the Plaza Accord meeting in the fall of 1985, other traders in the office had been piggybacking George and hence were long the yen going into the meeting. When the yen opened 800 points higher on Monday morning, these traders couldn't believe the size of their gains and anxiously started taking profits. Supposedly, George came bolting out of the door, directing the other traders to stop selling the yen, telling them that he would assume their position. While these other traders were congratulating themselves for having taken the biggest profit in their lives, Soros was looking at the big picture: The government has just told him that the dollar was going to go down the next year, so why shouldn't he be a pig and buy more?

Soros is also the best loss taker I've ever seen. He doesn't care whether he wins or loses on a trade. If a trade doesn't work he's confident enough about his ability to win on other trades that he can easily walk away from the position. There are a lot of shoes on the shelf; wear only the ones that fit. If you're extremely confident, taking a loss doesn't bother you."

I've been blogging over on Spreadsong.com for a while, and it's an awkward mix. Every once in a while I'd have an idea for a post I wanted to write, but it wouldn't quite be something that's appropriate for our company blog. In fact, a bunch of the posts I did on our company site would qualify under that banner. This really goes to a fundamental question that now exists- what exactly the fuck is an 'online presence'?

Twitter's cool, Facebook rocks, blogging is a great way to get ideas out, get feedback, and meet new people.

But how does it all tie together?

Don't get me wrong- Posterous is great! I love it- I'm just firing off an email in Mail and, what do you know, it shows up for the world to see. That's pretty badass- it removes the barrier to blogging, and it makes it more natural. You write emails to friends. You write blogs to share things with the world. But, if you're sending an email to post@posterous.com, it's just like sending an email to a friend!

At the end of the day there's no good way to pull together all these various aspects of who you are. Facebook is for friends who I'd hit up to grab drinks whenever I'm in town. Twitter's for whoever the hell clicks follow. Sites like Posterous and Tumblr are for sharing ideas with the internets. Flickr's for sharing pictures. Youtube's for sharing video. But, if you just want a homepage that ties all this together, what's the real answer? It's beyond retarded that we have to use so many services for this. Facebook is fully integrated, but, by being focused on friends, it sucks for sharing stuff broadly.

Look at http://busterbenson.com - that guy has it down pat. THAT is what every person should be able to have, online. But, to do that, you have to build your own webapp, build charts on the fly with jquery, plug into a half dozen apis, dance the macarena, and then push to Heroku. It's nonsensical- and it's a market opportunity. 

This is my longwinded way of starting a personal blog ;)