1. Speed

2. Instant utility

3. Personality

4. Less is more

5. Programmable

6. Personal

7. Restful (meaning anything should have a URL)

8. Discoverable (i.e. SEO)

9. Clean (one could see this as a duplication of 4)

10. Playful

It is also worth listing to the Q & A in the end: The product has to be the marketing vehicle for the product itself.

The 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps from Carsonified on Vimeo.

There are four excellent companies who dominate how we search, how we shop, how we communicate, and which gadgets we use: Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook.

The first three of these companies also are among the top 5 of the Fortune Magazine’s 50 most admired companies in 2010 . (Facebook is not in this list and this fact does not so much discredit Facebook as discredit the Fortune list).

But why write about this obvious fact of the Fab Four?

All these companies are product driven. This of course applies to Apple. The product is the hero, not the service around it, or the pricing. At Google, an engineer is much more important than a sales person. Just look at the amazing Zurich facility of Google and compare this to any sales office. If you listen to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, he will mostly talk about the product and new features that help Facebooks users to use the site in yet another way. Amazon has lead in meticulous A/B testing of it’s website, to make sure it stays ahead.

The other point I want to talk about is the sheer share of mind of these companies.

“Which startup is hot at the moment?” this question by a friend made me think recently. No offence to my fellow startup entrepreneurs, but it seems to me that at the moment where even a small redesign by Facebook will automatically be more talked about than the most exciting new business idea.

Even the slightest new announcement from Apple, Facebook or Google, – the aptly worded “buzz” as latest example – commands more press interest than a new car model or even the most fantastic new startup. Bloomenergy.com is at least here in Europe virtually unheard of. This share of mind is even more scary than the user numbers, as it makes life harder for new entrants.

The good news: Five years from now, the Fab Four will not be the same companies. Someone will get it wrong, someone else will get it right.

Five years ago, I would have included Ebay in that list, today no more. There is a nice account of how companies historically fail to stay at the top in the Black Swan by Nicholas Taleb. At writing of that book in 2006 , only 74 of the S&P 500 companies of earlier times had survived. But I am willing to bet that even in 5 years from now, at least three out of the four dominating companies will be from the West Coast. Probably the fourth as well, you never know with these Black Swans…

I know you all expect something here about VCs, entrepreneurship, Green stuff etc.

However, I was so amazed by flightradar24.com, that I had to share it. Wait a minute until the picture refreshes. Wow.

I admit to be totally biased as I am naturally a big fan of the power of reviews. However, I need to highlight this little feature in the new Qype personal page called ‘Insider Tips’. It does not show me the reviews of my friends, but it shows me places that are liked by people who like similar stuff I do. I really have no idea how they do it – too remote for that – but the results are truly amazing for me. Every time I reload this, I see places I always thought might be cool, but have not checked out yet.

Two rather philosophical thoughts come to my mind.

• One is the one I mentioned in the headline: It is not who you know. It is what people like who behave like you also like. Amazon has done this in an amazing quality. “People who bought this also bought…” I am very proud that Qype is proving to be able to do this as well. By the way this also contradicts the tradional power of your social graph.
• The second thought: What we thought initially when we launched Qype in 2006, that the person who shares her views gets something back, is now being executed on in a material way.

Check it out.

I found over time that many people can not simply tell you what they love best. But when you ask people why they are unhappy in their job, it is rarely because they don’t love what they do, but  more often because they feel they can not do things the way they want, or because the someone as a boss who does not value them and their achievements.

In this context, stumbling upon this very inspirational blog post from Cal Newport, author of a study guide, (thanks, Dave Ambrose for the link) has structured my thinking on career achievement amazingly.

Newport quotes work from Edward Deci who found that

“To be happy, your work must fulfill three universal psychological needs: autonomy,competence, and relatedness.

• Autonomy refers to control over how you fill your time. As Deci puts it, if you have a high degree of autonomy, then “you endorse [your] actions at the highest level of reflection.”
• Competence refers to mastering unambiguously useful things. As the psychologist Robert White opines, in the wonderfully formal speak of the 1950s academic, humans have a “propensity to have an effect on the environment as well as to attain valued outcomes within it.”
• Relatedness refers to a feeling of connection to others. As Deci pithily summarizes: “to love and care, and to be loved and cared for.”

So for students, Newport argues that they should find something the really like and then become excellent at it. This will nearly always enable people to find a work environment where they can achieve a great sense of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Newport:

Your love of a subject will grow with your level of competence and autonomy

This also explains why many CEOs are unhappy in their jobs. Even if they are competent, the often suffer from a lack of autonomy. And if you encounter an entrepreneur who is unhappy, you can check with him whether his level of autonomy is where it should be.

I’ve been postponing to write about this book simply because I still am overwhelmed. Geoffrey Miller works in the field of evolutionary psychology which brings him extremely close to the currently very fashionable field of behavioural economics. And I am extremely intrigued to learn why we all actually behave the way we behave.

Particularly, I am spooked by the way I behave. On the one hand I have my ZEN inspired days. Less is more, breathe. The most important things in life are free. On the other hand, I have days where I crave things like powerful cars, the next watch, a slightly bigger living room. We all know how this works, I guess.

Miller’s book is all about behaviour, particularly about our spending behaviour. It put me at ease with myself. It explained to me why I behave the way I behave.

Geoffrey Miller manages to explain, why some people buy Hummers (without condemning them) and why others blog – all in the same book.

The book is extremely well written, funny, witty, well researched. There is no reason why you should not go and buy it now (use the link below, so I can afford more conspicious consumption). I was laughing loudly in my airplane seat when I read the story about Gérard, the Cro-Magnon and modern man from the future.

But just as an exercise, let me try and summarize from memory:

1. Most of the objects we buy, are signals that we as hypersocial animals send about ourselves. Conspicious consumption, can be broken down into conspicious waste (Hummer SUV’s), conspicious precision (the Rolex watch) or conspicous reptuation (here comes facebook into play).
2. There are only six defining (and mostly stable) personality traits everybody has: Intelligence (G), Openness (O), Conciencousness (C), Agreeableness (A), Stability (S) and Extraversion (E), combined and to memorize them better: GOCASE, like I can go along or wherever with that person…
3. Evolutionary, it is very important to communicate your personality traits and relative fitness indicators to others, either the real ones or the ones you want others to believe you own. This happens not only when girls by mascara or boys go to Gyms but as least as importantly,
4. We spend most of our time buying and displaying other fitness indicators as well. Intelligence (blogging for example, discussing books about behavioural economics), Openness (displaying our political views), Agreeableness (driving a Prius instead of a Hummer, or driving the BMW if we want to express that we are less agreeable), Concienciousness (by sticking to a hobby that requires meticulous attention to detail), Stability, or Extraversion (think about that pink hat that Girl wore at the party or facebook again). All this is mostly just signalling to others. If I buy a rifle, I could as well say: I am not dramatically open, and my agreeableness has it’s limits. Much easer to buy the rifle.
5. Without being judgemental, Miller  then goes on and suggests that very often instead of buying all these things to say something about ourselves, we very often much rather could talk to people, which might work better (and would also dramatically improve our resource efficency in my view). His lists of things in life that really matter are a nice reminder.
6. Getting even closer to behavioural economics, Miller gives a lot of support of a tax system that taxes consumption more than creation (work).

Only on the last pages, the nice and easy pace of the book accelerates a bit and the professor is released. Seems like he liked to squeeze just a couple of more thoughts in.

But that does not diminish the fact that when I started reading the book on Kindle*, and I tried to mark the best quotes and passages, my ‘notes’ section quickly got to more than 20% of the book. I am a big fan.

Buy at Amazon (DE):

* a purchase I made to show off my intelligence (reads), openness (to new technology) and whatever -

My experience with tech tour was quite good. Qype was selected both for past events in Montreux in 2007 and in Berlin in 2008. Following those events, we got quite a few enquiries from VCs we did not know we would appeal to.

This year, I am part of the selection committee. Quite eager to see who will be coming.

I said that I would only be interested in businesses which make life easier for everyone, make markets more efficient and disrupt the status quo; or help reduce emissions.

So here is the news:

We have identified several business concepts that fit the abovementioned criteria. True to what I said earlier, neither of them will involve dating or gambling. None of the concepts is a clone of something that works somewhere else, so there is considerable risk involved, but also ample opportunity.

For all businesses, we will be looking for entrepreneurs to launch and manage them. They will be able to count on input and advice, and will get enough freedom to run their businesses. And they will get reasonable shares to make them real entrepreneurs. Upspring will provide ideas, know how, infrastructure and seed funding.

So from now on, we will be scouting the market for real founders with

• great business accumen,
• team spirit,
• lot’s of potential
• at least 2, but no more than 5 years of job experience.
• An excellent business education
• and demonstrated entrepreneurial skills.

Locations will be Hamburg and Berlin. Do contact me via xing if you know of someone. If you want to apply, send a CV via Xing.