Every so often I go into Apple’s App Store (primarily for the iPad) and look for new apps to try. I’m typically looking for new games – time killers – that I can enjoy and relax with, and maybe share with the kids as well. App discovery isn’t great, and I usually don’t end up downloading anything.

Last week I found a game that I’m completely in love with: Silversword RPG.

It’s very reminiscent of The Bard’s Tale, which came out in 1985 on the Apple II. I started playing The Bard’s Tale on the PC (so must have been 1986 or 1987). There were a couple sequels as well. I loved The Bard’s Tale, along with the Ultima and Might & Magic series.

I always assumed there’d be a similar game made available on the iPad at some point, and I found it with Silversword.

Sure, games like Infinity Blade that push the iOS hardware and have ridiculously amazing graphics are fun too (Infinity Blade was also hugely successful), but beautiful graphics don’t automatically make a game fun. It’s the same with movies that have lots of special effects, they can still fall short.

Game designers (and startups in other areas too) have long been “copying” what works in an effort to capture the same level of success as predecessors. But cloning or copying something isn’t easy. You can copy what you see – the features, gameplay, graphics – but you can’t easily capture the essence of a game and replicate that. Copying the emotional connection someone feels to something is extremely difficult. In Silversword’s case, the game developer Mario Gaida has done a fantastic job. He clearly understands why people were such huge fans of The Bard’s Tale and other predecessors. There are homages to those games inside Silversword, both acknowledging the lineage and his appreciation for them.

Some brands have incredible staying power. Mario Brothers for example. My kids are playing Mario Brothers now on Flash websites. They love Mario, even though they have no clue where he came from or when he started. Every generation discovers The Beatles right?

Copying what makes a brand special is damn near impossible. There’s so much more that goes into it than mechanics, gameplay and graphics. Even successful brands have to re-invent themselves, while still trying to maintain the level of emotion and connection people felt to the originals. Nostalgia plays a big role; many of us like re-connecting to our past. I think that’s a big part of human nature, we like looking backwards and feeling good. In games this makes complete sense, because we remember how much we enjoyed them as kids. We get that same emotional high we got when we first put a floppy disk into a computer and were amazed.

Negative feedback hurts. It’s easy to take personally and get offended. It’s easy to dismiss too. But negative feedback is a lot better than no feedback at all. The worst thing for a startup -at any stage- is crickets.

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Ugh. Silence is the ultimate form of “you suck” feedback. Better that people take the time to tell you to your face. And in many cases, negative feedback can be more valuable than positive feedback, which is often given because people want to be nice. As a founder, you don’t need nice, you need honest and meaningful. So customers that tell you that you suck could be your most valuable ones ever. And just because they’re negative, doesn’t mean they won’t help you along the way, and ultimately buy from you.

When receiving negative (or positive) feedback, it’s important to understand the context. For example, feedback at any point in time, without any sense of historical feedback, is a very small data point. You shouldn’t ignore it, but keep it in perspective.

You need to understand the “why” behind feedback as much as possible. So don’t be scared to ask for more information from people that have just told you that you suck. Oftentimes they’re quite willing to speak their mind further. You need to understand your customers as much as possible. It may be that you’re focused on the wrong target market. It may be that you released really early, and find out that with a bit more work on the product, you can go back to those same people and they’re willing to try again. Sure it’d be nice if those people loved your product right away, but the above scenario is still a good one: you received honest (bad) feedback, you figured out what to do, you’ve determined it’s worth doing (because it impacts a broader, valuable market), and you still have a chance of making a sale down the road.

Negative feedback is discouraging. But you have to remember that it’s part of the learning process. It doesn’t feel like that all the time, but if you’re digging into the feedback, understanding the context, and using the feedback to make decisions, it’s going to help steer you in the right direction.

Silence is the worst. Negative feedback is just part of the process. You’ll need thick skin (every startup founder needs thick skin and a healthy dose of delusion). Try your best to avoid the crazy up and down roller coaster that comes with good and bad feedback. Focus on learning. Focus on extracting the value from feedback, and moving forward.

HighScore House is one of our portfolio companies at Year One Labs. After leaving Year One Labs, they decided to join 500Startups and go through the 3-4 month acceleration program to continue building their product, learning and growing their network.

Yesterday, they presented at 500Startups’ Demo Day. It’s interesting to see the pitch evolve – changing as the guys learn about how to position themselves, based on the audience, etc. It’s great to see the progress they’ve made in a short few months: launching an iPad app, adding two key members to their team, and building a crucial network into Silicon Valley/Mountain View and beyond.

It might seem strange for a startup to go from one accelerator to another, but Year One Labs and 500Startups are very different programs. And I think this will become much more common as time progresses. As I’ve said before, all accelerators are different and they can provide different value at different times depending on what you need. When HighScore House started it was little more than the germ of an idea. When they left Year One Labs they had a product, traction and a very deep understanding of the market and what to do next. They were talking to customers (mostly 30-something moms) every single day, and still do.

500Startups was about continuing that work, but also about building a great network and awareness for the company. They added great advisors and investors including Jason Bailey, Kay Luo, James Levine, Dan Martell and Mike Greenfield.

Now HighScore House is going to be launching in earnest, opening up the doors and working on the key challenges they face in the market. But the foundation is there and well built, and it’ll be exciting to watch them grow (and help along the way!)

My history with hiring university students and recent graduates for technical positions has not been a good one.

In my first company (~15 years ago) we tried hiring recent university and technical college graduates for junior developer positions. I was struck by the near carbon copy similarities between most of the resumes. Very few of the tech students / graduates had any meaningful experience, and even fewer had done any hacking on the side to develop their skills. Their resumes consisted primarily of the projects they had done in school and non-related jobs. I remember getting a bunch of resumes from one university where they all described the exact same project – an elevator simulation done in Java. It was impossible to differentiate between the people.

Fast forward to a couple years ago when I was recruiting founders for Year One Labs. We were looking for people – even if they didn’t have a specific idea – to pair with other founders, get started on an idea, etc. and I met a young and super smart guy who was still in university. He had been hacking since he was a kid, but had stopped because of school. He was trying to get back into it (because I asked him about what he’d been doing lately hacking-wise), and this was his response (paraphrasing):

“I’d love to, but the schoolwork is so heavy, I don’t have any time. In my program [Computer Science] you have to pick two out of three: schoolwork, dating or hacking. I have to do the schoolwork, and dating … well … I am human …”

Far be it from me to deny anyone the pleasures of dating. But being overloaded with schoolwork is asinine.

The university had taken a promising hacker and turned him into another clone. (Side note: In this particular case, I’m confident the guy I’m speaking about will figure it out and pursue his dreams, university-contraints or otherwise. I’m not trying to insult him personally.)

I asked a few other students if they felt the same way, and they did. I didn’t do a statistically relevant survey of a large student population, but it was enough evidence for me to remain frustrated with the university system.

Today, we’re hiring co-op students at GoInstant. And lo and behold I’m seeing some of the exact same issues. Every resume is almost identical. The cover letters are the worst: either they’re all working together to write the same thing, using the same template, or being coached by the university on how to write a proper cover letter. Maybe all three. But it’s impossible to get through even a handful without giving up. A minuscule percentage of the applicants have done any side projects using newer technologies. I don’t think a single applicant had a github account. But they’re all learning Java! Yay! 15 years from when I started recruiting students, and they’re still doing a lot of the same things. And good portion of applicants are including completely non-relevant work experience (I really don’t care if you worked at McDonald’s), presumably to fill up the “pre-requisite” 1-2 page resume. If I hadn’t seen this sort of thing before it might be easy to assume that the fault lies only with this one university, but that’s not the case. I’ve seen these issues before.

Universities (and technical colleges) need to come up with a way to lower the “old school” coursework and allow students to hack. Students need to be hacking on side projects that use newer technologies. It’s not just about new technologies, it’s about genuinely learning by doing. If they need to get credit for it as part of the university program, figure it out. But if students aren’t coming out of university with more “real-world” and practical experience building stuff we’re doomed. Even Walmart uses Node.js. If you think new technology and experimentation are the exclusive domains of startups and “Silicon Valley” tech companies, you’re sorely mistaken. I would propose that universities cut a class per semester and replace that with a semester-long side project. Put some constraints of some kind, some guidelines, but then let the students at it. If the professors aren’t capable of grading the work because they’re not familiar with new technology, bring in industry folks that can help.

Bottom line: Universities have to find a way to provide students with the time and space to do more hacking. I know some of this is going on already, but we need more of it.

And students: While I feel for your situation and the fact that your coursework is ridiculous (and probably, for the most part, extremely dull), and I appreciate that it’d be nice to meet someone from the opposite sex occasionally and “mingle” … you need to find a way to stand out from everyone else and do something for yourself and your career. You might think of university as an investment in yourself – and it is – but you can be doing a lot more to invest in yourself by hacking away on side projects. Try Codecadamy for example. Life’s hard, you can’t wait around for the school system to change, so figure it out.

Take out non-relevant work experience from your resumes. I don’t care if you were a salesperson at The Gap. I don’t care if you flipped burgers at Burger King. And I don’t care about your grades. They’re not a real reflection of your ability to hack like crazy in a startup. And if you’re going to write an insanely generic cover letter that makes you look like everyone else, you might reconsider writing one at all. Your goal is to be memorable – in everything you do. Creative writing may not be your strength as geeks, so tackle the problem in another way. I remember once getting a cover letter in code. The guy’s cover letter told me to go to a website and input a command. It spat out the cover letter in a cool format from there. Smart. Creative. Different.

Some say “two out of three ain’t bad,” but in this case it’s not enough. I don’t want kids flunking out of school (although I have tried on occasion to convince students to quit … I mean … defer their studies for awhile), and I certainly don’t want to stop people from dating, but if more university students don’t start working on side projects, hacking, learning new technologies and differentiating themselves, we’re losing out on the opportunity to develop great new talent that could do so much more.

How you differentiate from competitors only matters if it matters to customers.

Pick any differentiation you want – pricing, features, target market, market gap, performance, etc. – unless customers really, really, really care about the difference, you’re shit out of luck. Hell, pick two or three of them and it still doesn’t matter. You can’t pile them on and assume that’ll make the difference.

When doing competitive research, don’t just look at what the competition is doing, figure out how customers feel about them. Understand why customers are picking one competitor over another. What’s motivating and driving them?

Being different from competitors isn’t enough. That’s easy. Making sure that your key differentiators actually matter in a huge way to customers is a whole other story.

I got into computers fairly early because of my father. He went back to university in 1986 in his early 40s and did a BSc. in Computer Science. I was 11 years old. Our first computer was a PC of some kind; I don’t remember what it was, but I remember it was expensive, $7,000+ or so. My father then went on to work “in computers” for 15 years. I say “in computers” because that’s what everyone called it back then, it was easier than explaining what he really did.

Strangely enough, I didn’t really get into programming. I’m not sure why, it seems like it would have been a natural fit. But I did get a very healthy appreciation for technology, and was well ahead of my friends. I remember BBSs and later on MUDs (which I still love, although don’t play. I even started coding in C and C++ for a MUD that I was running; it was insanely fun.) I remember going to a summer camp where we learned Logo.

At the time, computers weren’t particularly prominent in schools. They existed, but all we were really doing was word processing. I remember Typing Tutor from “computer class” in high school where kids were just learning how to type. Pretty silly by today’s standards.

Today, my seven year old son in Grade 2 has computers in his class. Some schools are experimenting with iPads at even younger ages. A lot more kids will grow up with a lot more technology. That’s a given; there’s a lot more technology that’s easily accessible. But unless the education system starts teaching programming in schools, a lot of that technology will go to waste.

Almost five years ago I wrote 10 Things They Need to Teach in Highschool. I should have put programming at the top of the list, instead of the bottom.

But more than teaching programming, we need to encourage and incentivize kids to create things. Build things. Invent things. Knowing the mechanics of coding is one thing, but being inspired, motivated and rewarded for building stuff is key. That’s what will help create more entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are builders. We like to build things. I was inspired by my parents and what they had done as entrepreneurs, and I’m sure there’s some genetics involved as well … but kids spend so much time in school and can be so influenced by their years there that I’m certain more could be done. Teach kids to code. And teach kids to build. Actually, I think most kids already know how to build, and a lot of kids want to build stuff … but they need the educational system to endorse and reward their activity, otherwise they can’t get through the system successfully. It’s not as simple as saying, “get out of the way” because the system is the way, and at least while kids are in school (particularly in the earlier years) they have to play by the rules. So the rules need to change.

These days, most entrepreneurs I talk to understand the importance of speaking with customers before building a full-blown product. They’re getting out of the building. And that’s great. A few years ago it wasn’t like that at all.

But unfortunately, I often speak with entrepreneurs that have only talked to one or two customers. That’s not nearly enough. The danger in speaking with too few customers is that you bet too much on too little data. If the first customer you speak to loves your idea and you put blinders on to go build the solution, you haven’t eliminated any real risk. You’ve just found one potential customer. Chances are you don’t even understand the problem well enough to solve it.

A customer that says, “That sounds cool,” or “That would be really useful,” is a lot different than one who says, “I’ve tried solving that problem in a few ways, and looked at five different solutions, none of which really addresses my problem.”

You need to find out if the customers you’re speaking to have ever tried to solve the problem on their own and/or if they’ve gone out and looked at other solutions. If they haven’t done that, there’s a very good chance the problem isn’t big or painful enough. Ask them straight up, “How have you tried to solve this problem before?” Don’t be shy about it.

Consulting companies that want to convert themselves into product companies run the risk of building a product off too few customers. They get hired to build something, and assume there are no alternative solutions that are good enough. They deliver the solution and then decide that there must be a whole bunch of other customers out there that need the same thing. Maybe. But maybe not.

In my experience you need to speak with at least 10-15 potential customers before you can see any significant patterns and get any real clarity. After 10 or so interviews you should have a good sense as to whether or not the problem you’re proposing to solve is important enough.

One customer doesn’t automatically represent a worthwhile market. It’s just one customer. And you need to know why they’re a customer (or a potential customer) before making the big assumption that they represent a full-blown market. If they became a customer because they didn’t know any better (never bothered looking for something else), or they’re your friends, or some other non-replicable and scalable reason, you could be in trouble.

Anyone that’s ever applied for a job has experienced the resume black hole. You apply for a job and don’t hear anything back (you might get an automated “thank you”). After a few days you send a follow up message (if you can find an email address) and wait some more. Nothing. No word whatsoever comes back.

It’s demoralizing and frustrating. And it’s insanely common. Too few companies take the time to respond to applicants in any way whatsoever.

The task of sending “thanks but no thanks” emails is time consuming and unpleasant. I always feel like the bad guy doing it, and struggle with what to say. I want to be honest and fair without making people feel shitty.

Some companies get so many resumes (hundreds / application) that it’s almost impossible to respond to all of them. I don’t see that changing in the future (even if it should.) They could setup automated email systems that are triggered as they’re changing applicants’ statuses in their back-end systems, so at least applicants get something relevant, and not totally generic, but most don’t put in the time or effort to do so.

For companies that get fewer applications, you should make the effort to respond to everyone. I tend to write very simple and short emails in these circumstances. Occasionally applicants will reply and disagree with my assessment, sometimes quite nastily. Don’t get into an email flame war with applicants – you can’t really win that battle. Either ignore the email, or reply with another very clear, “thanks, but no thanks” message. Some applicants will reply and genuinely ask for help, curious about what they should do to improve their career opportunities going forward. I have no problem responding to these kinds of emails with suggestions. Just because someone isn’t qualified today, doesn’t mean they won’t be qualified in the future. And it doesn’t mean they’re not qualified for other positions and can’t be successful elsewhere.

I don’t think brands / companies really get hurt by the resume black hole. Too many companies have them; if brands really did get seriously damaged by the resume black hole you’d see the impact. It’s just not there. The resume black hole – unfortunately – is the status quo. If a company goes beyond that in its poor recruitment and hiring practices, it can absolutely have a negative impact on their brand. The flip side is also true — eliminate the resume black hole and you’ll be rewarded for it in the public eye.

Black hole image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Massive Damage is the location-based mobile game company that graduated from Year One Labs last year. I’ve written about them in the past. Their first game, Please Stay Calm (a zombie apocalypse game) is killing it with a strong, dedicated user base, fun / addictive gameplay, and lots of cool stuff coming soon. Plus, the company is generating revenue. From the moment they launched, Massive Damage was looking at growing and optimizing revenue, along with nailing product-market fit on the game side. Things are coming along very nicely…

One of the key challenges for any startup is hiring. And Massive Damage is looking for the right people to join their team. Currently, they’re hiring a PHP Developer (Toronto). They’ll be hiring a lot more in the Spring / early Summer too, but if you’re a kick ass PHP Developer that wants to work at a game startup, check these guys out.

They’ve aptly and boldly titled their job posting: Trust me, you want to work here

Want to have ownership, influence and meaning in your work? Join the Massive Damage team where you can actually make a difference and work on games that are being played by tens of thousands of players every day. We’re looking for a full-time developer to help us build websites, dashboards, game platforms, API services and analytics.

If you’re interested, you can check out the requirements and learn more about the company.

Customers should be rewarded earlier and more often in the relationship they establish with vendors.

This is true of any type of customer and any type of business. Keurig does a nice job of providing members with 10% off purchases. That’s not a ton of money when you’re buying coffee, but it’s something. More importantly, it’s an instantaneous and ongoing reward for being a member. On the flip side, Aeroplan is such a ridiculous program that you never feel like you’ll get anything (on top of which the experience with most airlines is painful.)

Discounts are an obvious way of rewarding customers, but there are other creative ways too. Everyone likes receiving presents. Hand-written thank you notes work too. Surprise ‘em and they’ll pay you.

If you build a reward program into your strategy, make the early rewards achievable and addictive. This is where a bit of smart gamification comes in handy. Some companies reward loyalty (or try to), but very few reward customers earlier on, after one or two purchases, before loyalty is proven. And I think that’s a mistake.

The reward sign picture is courtesy of Shutterstock.