Yearly Archives: 2013

The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins

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The question as I see it: how do you live within legal bounds if your God-given talent is, well, illegal? Fundamentally, that’s the question asked in this excellent New Yorker article on pickpocket artist Apollo Robbins. The start of this one is amazing:

A few years ago, at a Las Vegas convention for magicians, Penn Jillette, of the act Penn and Teller, was introduced to a soft-spoken young man named Apollo Robbins, who has a reputation as a pickpocket of almost supernatural ability. Jillette, who ranks pickpockets, he says, “a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole,” was holding court at a table of colleagues, and he asked Robbins for a demonstration, ready to be unimpressed. Robbins demurred, claiming that he felt uncomfortable working in front of other magicians. He pointed out that, since Jillette was wearing only shorts and a sports shirt, he wouldn’t have much to work with.

“Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.”

Again, Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. He instructed Jillette to place a ring that he was wearing on a piece of paper and trace its outline with a pen. By now, a small crowd had gathered. Jillette removed his ring, put it down on the paper, unclipped a pen from his shirt, and leaned forward, preparing to draw. After a moment, he froze and looked up. His face was pale.

“Fuck. You,” he said, and slumped into a chair.

Robbins held up a thin, cylindrical object: the cartridge from Jillette’s pen.

For his next trick, Apollo stays out of jail.

A Lifetime Endeavor

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David Heinemeier Hansson at 37signals has been on a roll lately with some great writing. Yesterday he wrote about his life’s work, feeling a connection to firms of old where people worked for 40 years:

Committing myself to this long-term focus has led to a peaceful work atmosphere and an incredible clarity of purpose. If this is the last job I’ll ever have, I damn well better make sure that I like it. I won’t just tough things out. If shit is broken, we’ll fix it now, lest we be stuck with it for decades.

I generally feel that way about the work we do here at Infinity Softworks. If I spent the rest of my life on the idea of figuring out better ways for people to work with numbers, I wouldn’t be upset at all.

Wall Street, generally, has the opposite problem. Since companies are judged every quarter, it is hard to make long-term decisions. The broken stuff doesn’t get fixed because the broken stuff doesn’t help make the fourth quarter numbers.

It helps, of course, that David (like I) helped invent the company he wants to spend the rest of his life working for. He helps pick which projects 37signals takes on, he helps develop the plans and manage the teams. When you pick your own future, it’s a lot easier to love what you do and want to spend a lifetime doing it.

The Future of Tablets

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I skimmed the headlines coming out of the CES trade show in Las Vegas the last couple of days. I never found hardware that interesting, honestly, so almost nothing caught my attention… until I saw this video:

Obviously it can be this thin because there is no battery attached, but it is clear to see a future where our tablets are as thin as a piece of paper and can connect together just by touching them. This is cool stuff!

The Case For Weakening iOS App Store Sales

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We have seen a pretty significant drop in sales over the past 12 months. I spent much time first beating myself up over not adjusting faster and then forgiving myself and trying to understand why it occurred. I have come to four conclusions of what could be impacting our sales:

Increased Competition: We were, for the longest time, the king of iPad calculators but the number of apps available specifically for iPad has increased over the past year. [1] In particular, HP launched its 12c version specifically for iPad and we worked with DEWALT to build a version for construction, eating into our finance and construction sales. This caused a little softening in the second quarter but wasn’t enough to make us worry. We did play with pricing in the summer to see the impact, something I still mean to write about here. The bottom line on that one: more unit sales, less revenue, not worth it.

App Store Changes: With the release of iOS 6 in October, Apple changed the App Store’s presentation. I think this had two effects: 1) it emphasized apps named the same as their search terms and 2) changed how far into any search results a customer was willing to go. For the former, apps named “checklist” or “calculator” are overemphasized in the App Store as those are terms people search for. In our case, almost every one of our powerOne apps has a competitor named by the search term: mortgage calculator, finance calculator, scientific calculator, etc. Since Apple emphasize exact name matches, these apps always end up at the top of the list. Regarding the latter, the shift from a list of apps to cards means customers don’t look at more then the first couple of apps. Previously it was easy to look at 25 or 50 options quickly. (Image from VentureBeat.)

Shift to International Markets: US smartphone market penetration now exceeds 50%. I believe this means that products primarily geared around the US market will see slowing sales. Apps who have broad appeal beyond US borders should do better, although Europe too is at or near 50%. powerOne apps are heavily geared around both US mathematics and English language.

Shift to Consumers: I also believe we are experiencing a shift from professional customers to consumer ones. The earliest adopters of iPhone and Android smartphones were, logically, professionals. They could write off the price of the expensive phones plus had the most need to carry portable computers in their pockets. They were also trained for years by Palm and BlackBerry to think about pocketable computing. Our products are heavily geared toward professionals, many of whom have already bought a powerOne product. As the new smartphone buyers become more consumer-oriented, there is less need for productivity apps and thus our sales weaken, even as the entire App Store’s sales escalate.

This, of course, is all speculation. There is no way of really knowing what has happened. If I was a betting man, though, I’d bet on a combination of these factors.

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[1] I couldn’t find a 2012 number but there were 60,000 iPad specific apps in January 2011 and 275,000 in October 2013.

Making The Most

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I spent time this weekend pulling apart old photo albums. We’ve already digitized our music and movie collections. Photos are next.

This story starts with me leaving South Florida, where my mom and stepdad moved me and my brother in 1988, to go to the University of Cincinnati in 1991. I was to study engineering, a silly choice for someone who spent all his high school free time writing code. When I got there I knew absolutely no one, was still five hours from my dad so had no support structure, and basically was in shock, completely alone. I ended up meeting some guys that accepted me, they were in a fraternity, so I joined, another very weird decision for me.

The next school year I moved into the house and lived in a variety of rooms during that time and took a variety of jobs, including cooking on Tuesday nights. (I had never cooked a meal in my life before that but I didn’t make anyone sick so I must have done okay.) In the spring of 1993 I was elected treasurer and did a solid enough job. I really enjoyed the job and was part of my decision to switch from engineering to business. My big claim to fame is that I filled the house for the summer, making it profitable. That had never happened before.

Except it was really hot and there was no air conditioning. I couldn’t stand it and, one day, went out and found an apartment with air conditioning and moved out.

It was a really stupid decision. Yes, moving further from campus was a silly decision as I wasted tons of time driving back and forth to my apartment 20 minutes away. But moving out of the house meant I had to relinquish my role as treasurer. For the first time in my two+ years at Cincinnati I finally was fitting in, being apart of the team, learning how to manage peers. And I moved out, gave up the role. I’m sure I annoyed a bunch of people, especially since I did it with no notice.

I was flailing around so badly, looking for something but not knowing what I was looking for. In the next few months, a long-term relationship disintegrated, I dumped the apartment, dropped out of school, packed my car with everything I would keep, and drove through a blizzard back to Florida.

Pulling those albums apart, looking at those pictures, just made me think about what a silly, impulsive decision it all was. It was incredible training for running a company, leading peers. I threw that all away over a hot spell. It reminded me of something I haven’t forgotten since: make the most of every situation, even if that situation is a bad one.