NYC MTA Trains: The Epitome of Entertainment

Riding trains in New York is unlike anything I have ever experienced. You get a bit of everything. It's so annoying driving through NYC so everyone catches the train.

In the morning, you see young bankers, lawyers, and executives riding downtown to city hall or the financial district. The young designers, fashionistas, and VCs stop down by SOHO. The tourists stop in Midtown. Some people head uptown, but I'm not sure what jobs those lucky people are headed to; they avoid the train congestion. Outside of the regular train riders, you have the performers, beggars, singers, and etc EVERYDAY. Given this interesting assortment of people on the train, there is something hilarious to see everyday. 

Today on the train two guys got on the train blaring music from their blue tooth speaker. Now generally trains are pretty quiet, so people having loud conversations is usually surprising. So when these two guys get on the train blaring old school Usher, I just chuckled. Some people were annoyed but I was entertained. Each day I see something new. 

The coolest thing I saw on the train was a performance by some teenagers. The young performers were so good that I gave them close to 5 bucks (my average donation is a dollar). They were flipping down the thin aisles of the train. At one point, in some feat of magic, two of the performers grabbed each other's ankles and arms and proceeded to roll down the aisle together. I was pretty impressed. They did all of this in the time it took to progress from one stop to the next. NYC trains are full of interesting things and you will see literally anything if you ride long enough. 

Techie Restaurants: Panera Ordering

I was in Panera today with my girlfriend and her brother.  She did the coolest thing. While we were sitting there and talking, she ordered her food on their website and the waiter brought it to the table. He brought the receipt and the meal along with a half smile (I don't think he likes his job very much). 

I have ordered tons of food online. Some orders I have picked up at the register. Some orders were delivered to my home. But I have never ordered from my phone or computer at the table and then had it delivered to me. It's probably not very novel and can happen at many restaurants, but it was actually a pretty cool, frictionless experience.  

Then I started thinking about why iBeacon has the potential to be super help and cool along with how phones will allow for personalized orders for anything while you are in a store or restaurant. Imagine walking into a Starbucks and your phone places your custom order for you. Then the barista brings it to your table. The not so distant future is already occurring in small waves.  

Execution 101: Ideas are ONLY Ideas

People are always sooooo scared to share their ideas with friends, family, and strangers. There is this intrinsic fear that someone is going to steal their "great" idea. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but if it's a good idea and in a good space, then someone is probably already doing it and they probably have better funding.  

Mike Lazerowe said it best..."you are more likely to destroy your own company than competition. Between funding issues, founder issues, execution issues, and everything inbetween, there is a good chance you may not end up with a billion dollar company. Unicorns are hard to come by in real life and in businesses. 

The main issue with having paranoia around an idea is that it's just an idea. The process of building a actual company is 1000x harder than pontificating one drunken night in your room. The only people lucky enough to benefit off of an "idea" are the Winklevoss twins from Facebook and the long lost Snapchat founder. Be open to sharing your idea to people. It's okay. Don't give away all of the IP, trade secrets, and secret sauce, but share it enough so that people can help augment your idea and actually help you make it into a business. 

Independent Contractors are Taking Over!

I started reading "Serving Workers in the Gig Economy" the other day. It's a pretty interesting read. I'll try to explain it without spoiling the book for you. In short it's about the rise of the "Gig Economy" which in short is in reference to the rise of Independent Contractors.

So the first logical question is, WHAT IS AN INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR. Legal Zoom has a pretty good description here. In short an employee is hired on by the company on contract. You do not receive benefits like health insurance, workers comp, retirement, etc. Many companies hire contract workers for non-essential jobs because they can save 18% in expenses. For example, if you hire a graphic designer as a independent contractor in NYC, you would have to pay $50K, but if you hire that same graphic designer as an employee, you have to pay him almost $60K. 

Now that we have handled the concept of independent contractor, I will discuss why this book is interesting. So the business case for startups in the Gig Economy is huge. Unlike full-time employees, independent contractors have to take care of everything. They have to remember to file taxes correctly, get insurance, get their own insurance, find new training, and etc. This list goes on and on. Most independent contractors have no idea how to do this and there isn't a simple, inexpensive solution to find many of these resources. Where there is a large ever increasing problem, there is a need for solutions from innovative entrepreneurs. Blog VI.