Daily Archives: May 23, 2007

What’s next?

Now that the formalities are out of the way I can say a bit more about what I’m going to do next.

I start a new part-time role next week with Rod and the team at Xero.

I will be head of product strategy. Rod posted earlier today about how they (we!) are dealing with prioritisation and product development, which explains quite nicely where this role fits into the bigger picture.

I’m excited about this new challenge. It’s an excellent opportunity for me to apply what I’ve learnt at Trade Me to a global product.

Rod has put together an amazing team and I’m going to enjoy being part of it.

I’m also looking forward to having time to get involved in some other ventures either as an advisor or investor. I’ve been pretty quiet in this respect up until now, but I have my eyes open.

Because Xero is in the middle of the IPO process I can’t say too much more than that at this point, but needless to say I will be posting more here in the coming weeks.

So, stay tuned.

Playing with plugs

With young kids in our house every plug point is covered by one of these:

Image courtesy of Trade Me seller chris2111.

Our oldest has been taught not to touch.

Today he was asked ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’.

The immediate response: ‘Play with plugs’

Classic! :-)

Less is more

Set Godin has a great post today.

Here is a taste:

“As long as there’s wiggle room, our desire for more will trump peer pressure to do less. ‘Fight global warming’ is a fine slogan, except it’s meaningless. That’s like dieters everywhere shouting, ‘eat less’ while they stand in line to get bleu cheese dressing from the salad bar.

As a marketer, my best advice is this: let’s figure out how to turn this into a battle to do more, not less. Example one: require all new cars to have, right next to the speedometer, a mileage meter. And put the same number on an LCD display on the rear bumper. Once there’s an arms race to see who can have the highest number, we’re on the right track.”

Go read the whole post.

Then, think: how are you encouraging your customers to do what you’d like them to do?