Not enough young machinsts?

I correspond with quite a lot with friends in the Manufacturing world, as one of my big interests aside from software is building things.  Come to think of it, that’s really my interest in software too!

For a long time there has been a great hue and cry about the demise of Manufacturing in the US.  It’s been a victim of outsourcing, fewer and fewer new entrants to key careers like being a machinist, automation killing jobs, social pressures around whether blue-collar manufacturing jobs get the respect they deserve, the scarcity of good vocational programs, and so on.  On the one hand, the big manufacturing economy seems more and more hostile to its professionals.  They want to outsource overseas, pay as little as possible to button pushers on soulless assembly lines, insist on credentials over wisdom and experience (ask a room full of grizzled veteran machinists what they think about the new kid just out of Engineering school some time), and all the rest.  Plus, some of these corporations have been very poorly run and they want to make their workers pay the price through layoffs and other wage cuts.

On the other hand, it’s a great time if you’re an entrepreneur who wants to be a small business owner.  Why?  Because a talented individual can start a manufacturing business in their garage and turn out amazing products.  Because the Internet makes it possible for that individual to reach an audience they never could have 10 or 15 years ago.  It also makes it possible to draw on the wisdom of your peers in ways you never could have years ago, using forums like this one, for example.  Because the software needed to do world-class manufacturing can be run on a PC in the home office.  And above all else, because if you can imagine it, you can actually create it for the most part.  Here in Silicon Valley, we’re used to the idea that a couple of developers in a garage can create world-class software, but the idea they can also manufacture world-class products is one that hasn’t yet sunk in.  The technology has come a long ways, and I believe it will make a difference in ways we haven’t yet seen.

Where my kids are concerned, I’ve tried to teach them that the heroes are the small businesses and small business owners.  I live in the heart of Silicon Valley, and there are companies large and small.  I have to say, the folks that own their own businesses and are just off the edge of where the hyper competition spotlights shine are the happiest people I know, and they often make just as much money as all but the über rich who start companies like Google.  I’m not talking about just software developers, I’m also talking about friends with blue-collar businesses like building contractors (talk about a hard hit industry, but if you have a reputation as a craftsman, you can still make a good living) or jobs many find boring, like accountants.

It’s not a popular point of view, but I believe America wasn’t built by the Big Companies, but rather by the Little Ones.  After all, small businesses create most of the jobs in our economy, and every country has Big Companies.  In many industries the biggest companies are not US companies.  But having the “get out there and build something for yourself spirit” is what really makes the difference.  We admire people like Henry Ford and Bill Gates, but we shouldn’t admire them for how big their companies got, but rather for how they conducted themselves to put their small companies on paths to greatness.  Microsoft is as big as its ever been today, but it isn’t the same company it was when Bill Gates started it.  The list of Big Companies that are mere shadows of what they were as Small Companies is long and there are not too many cases where the Big Company is a better company than the Small One it used to be.  Vinnie Mirchandani bemoans “Cash Cow Disease“, where investors think the Big Companies should quit innovating and start passing out their profits to shareholders.  Given how poorly many of them seem to perform later in life, maybe they should stick to their Cash Cows and leave the rest for the little guy.  It’s intriguing to think about which strategy would yield a better economy.

So take heart, entrepreneurs in all walks.  The New Year is coming.  What new Small Company will you start?

Happy Holidays!

What a circus Yahoo has become, and not in a good way.  As often as Arrington is over the top in his snarky posts, his latest about Yahoo is so on the mark that I’m even going to use his train wreck picture here, just to emphasize his point about Yahoo being in total disarray one more time.  Yahoo being screwed up isn’t exactly news, so why bring it up again and beat the dead horse? 

Well, because this time it’s personal.  You see, I use Delicious a lot and Yahoo seems to vacilate between intending to kill it versus intending to sell it.  Delicious is my second most essential blog research and information learning “todo” list.   The first is probably Google Reader, where I subscribe to nearly 200 feeds, but Delicious in many was is just as important and harder for me to replace.  You see, I do tons of research on the Internet when I get interested in a topic.  A lot of it doesn’t come to me in my RSS feeds, it comes through search, links others share, Twitter, and all the rest.  THOSE links are the ones I put into Delicious along with tags and notes to myself about why the link was interesting.

Delicisous has become my information archive for Samuel Johnson’s second kind of knowledge:

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

That second kind is pretty handy, and getting handier all the time as I get older.

So what’s the poor Delicious community to do?  First, Yahoo’s handling of it has been ridiculous.  Announce you’re sunsetting it without any real PR plan.  Apparently lose the team in the process.  And then come back and announce, “Oh by the way, we’re not killing it, we’re selling it.”  Whichever Yahoo exec failed to choreograph a better set of messages than that needs to be fired.  Today.  Seriously.  That’s ridiculous handling of the event and the asset.

As for selling it, I’m all for it, but there are only a few candidates available who make any sense as buyers.  Delicious has a fair amount of traffic, I’m sure.  2 guys with a credit card, time on their hands, and access to the Amazon Cloud probably can’t afford to keep it running and stable long enough to monetize it.  We need a white knight that is a real playa to step up.

Why should they do that if Yahoo couldn’t make a go of it?

Well take a look at Delicious and ask yourself how you’d make a go of it.  Here’s a web site where people tell you what web pages they like, and they do so proactively.  They do so because they obviously expect to like those things for long enough that they may refer back to them.  Here’s a site that has tool bars that reach out into many different web browsers and cover a lot of territory.  Here’s a site that helps others vector on to lists of links made by people with similar tastes. 

Now Google has managed to make a riculously almost sinfully successful business out of simply understanding what people are searching for.  A search is much more spur of the moment and requires a lot less investment than creating a bunch of bookmarks in Delicious.  We don’t get to follow up and see which searchs are traversed a second time very easily, an indication of even more interest.  We don’t get to see people running down lists created by others with similar interests. 

Are you seriously telling me there is no way to monetize this thing with advertising?  If so, you’re just not doing it right.  As I look at my Delicious page, I see not one single ad or other attempt at monetization.  That’s pathetic, Yahoo.  The medium is perfect for advertising and you aren’t even trying to make a dime off it before giving up.

That leads me to Google or Microsoft.  Both have excellent search technologies.  Both could monetize Delicious very quickly, Google probably even moreso than Microsoft.  I have often wished that Delicious was integrated with my Google Reader.  Heck, I’d like it even better if it integrated with Google Reader and G-Mail.  Can you imagine being able to privately tag web pages, RSS feed items, and email messages? 

That would be a very cool thing!

Think about what wonderful stickiness that would create too, Google.  I know you gotta love that, although as I see these services come and go stickiness worries me more and more.  Google and Microsoft, you know you could monetize this sucker, and you know Yahoo is in no position to dictate terms.  Come on.  Step up.  And Yahoo, get on with your train wreck, but sell this jewel off to a good home and don’t be too proud about how much you want for it lest you manage to squander your chance to sell and wreck the train further.

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Mathew Ingram rants about focus being a good thing for Yahoo.  But focus on the wrong things, an inability to execute even the most basic communication strategy about these decisions, and the apparent lack of coherent strategy for what to focus on that leads to real value will continue to kill the company just as surely as a lack of focus.