A few weeks ago, I ran across a box full of photos I had taken a while back. Actually, they were color slides, which should give you some idea of how old they are. Many of them were of people, events and even documents (photos of documents? Don’t even ask, I can’t remember why) from my second startup (actually, my third, but it was the second one I founded). The company was originally named Qualogy Technology, but wiser minds prevailed and it was later changed to Viewlogic Systems.
Viewlogic/Qualogy was started by a gang of five (including me) out of Digital Equipment Corporation. We worked for a full year refining the idea, testing the market and looking for money before we finally got funded. We knocked on many doors, gave fewer presentations, discussed our plan with even fewer semi-interested VCs and seriously talked with only a handful of potential investors. We rewrote the business plan so many times, I think I had every word memorized. We changed our revenue model, sales model, marketing plan and development schedule, but never changed our fundamental idea. We stuck with it because we believed in what we were doing and always thought that we could convince someone with money that we and our ideas were worthy of investment.
After a full year of effort, we finally beat someone into submission found an investor who believed in us and our plan. What did that initial deal entail? A total investment of only $50K (see the checks above – $25K from two VCs). My friend Dave points out that it amounts to a little over $100K in today’s dollars – not much money. In retrospect, the term sheet was crappy – contingencies, ratchets, board control issues and so forth. But none of that really mattered, we were on our way. If we had to make some additional sacrifices to be successful, they were acceptable. It was all about having the opportunity to execute our dream.
In the end, it worked out pretty well for all concerned. While not an insane, Harvard Business Review case study, cover of the Wall Street Journal, blowout success, the company did pretty well. Viewlogic went public and then sold a few years later for a little over half a billion dollars. Before it sold, it employed about 750 people, had direct sales worldwide and roughly $170M in revenue.
These days, I see startups often putting in even a greater levels of effort and dedication than we did in forming Viewlogic. The focus and intensity of these young companies is really outstanding. Frequently, though, I see a do or die mentality when it comes to getting funded at relatively high levels. Entrepreneurs think of big funding events as milestones and measurements of success instead of just being part of the process of initially refining and focusing their ideas and later growing them. Funding shouldn’t be the goal, it should be an accelerant to help a company achieve its real goals.
With that in mind, young companies should always look for alternatives to the classic substantial (relatively speaking) first round. Can they self fund? Can they get to positive cash flow earlier? Can they do some custom projects (adaptations of the company’s product or service) for specific early adopters? Can they simply take less money to bridge them to more success and further funding down the road?
Don’t get me wrong, time is against almost every company. Getting things done faster is important and having money to spend makes that much easier. Starting on a shoestring, with less money, or even no money, doesn’t prevent success, though. And, sometimes, it can even enhance it. It’s worked before.
37 medals, count ‘em. More than the US has ever won in the Winter Olympics (the previous US record was 34 in 2002 in Salt Lake); the first time the country has won the medal count since 1932 in Lake Placid; and more medals than any other country in the history of the event (Germany won 36, also in 2002). It’s sports. There are winners and losers. That’s the way it works. The US won. Celebrate it, America, you deserve to.
Americans are a funny bunch. For the most part, we want to obnoxiously demonstrate our leadership and strength, but in the end, we spend more time questioning and even regretting our exercise of the same than we do celebrating our success – any success. It seems that as a nation, we’re stuck between the polar extremes of being the ugly Americans and being the most stoic, self-deprecating, politically correct, wussiest humans to walk the planet.
The litany of commentary – both print and digital – discounting the performance of the US Olympic Team at the 2010 Winter Olympics is shocking and disappointing to me. Why is the US so afraid of admitting to itself that it won these Games? It’s not like we would be declaring world domination in sports or anything like that. The timers reported and the judges declared that the American athletes were better in more of the individual events than any other country during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Isn’t that simply the fact?
Speaking of facts . . . for those in the US who feel the need to downplay the US victory, here’s an arrow for your quiver. According to nationmaster.com, little Norway has kicked our ass in the Winter Olympics, as well as everyone else’s, during the history of the Winter event. The US isn’t close to being the all-time leader in the Games. Now do you feel like you can celebrate a little more? We’re not dominant. In fact, for most of the years that the Winter Olympics have run, the US medal count was only in the single digits.
I think the problem here is that we believe that the correct behavior for the world leader is one of introspection and humility. We’re afraid that if we show hubris, other countries will look down on us as not acting appropriately or as a leader should. While I question whether or not anyone should look at things that way and, for the most part, don’t really support it, I certainly understand the position and concern. I believe, however, that this neglects an internal need for certain behaviors. A need that is stronger now than it has been in over a century in this country.
Americans need to celebrate who we are and what we do. Most Americans barely know how the country leads in many scientific endeavors, in entrepreneurialism, in giving aide to foreign countries. These, of course, are the important things to celebrate, but they’re not visible. For some reason, the governing bodies of the US choose not to make a big deal of them – to make Americans feel proud of what they do. Any CEO worth his or her salt knows the value of helping their employees feel great about what they do. The tangible and intangible benefits are profound. The same thing needs to be done for the citizens of a country.
While sports are clearly less noble than other endeavors, they are visible to all and almost always black and white in terms of success and failure. They are a great tool for creating and celebrating success, especially when the stage is a worldwide one. We should use this year’s victory in the Olympics as a platform to declare success for Americans – admittedly, a minor one – to help us feel good about a real achievement. This is about celebrating within the country, not about bragging outside of it.
Before you blow me off here, let me give you two thoughts. We seemed to have no trouble accepting that the success in this year’s Super Bowl of the New Orleans Saints would be a good thing for the city of New Orleans, right? That one’s easy. No one is afraid of pissing off Indianapolis (the Indianapolis Colts lost in teh Super Bowl) residents by celebrating the success of another city in sports. Is there a reason that winning the Olympics is any different? And to those who are fixated on the idea that countries shouldn’t celebrate the success of sports teams, I ask you to look at the World Cup (soccer). If you want to see patriotic declarations of success that dwarf anything America could possible demonstrate, check out how European and South American countries celebrate when they beat other countries in World Cup games. Whew!
Sorry, I know this is a rant and a long one at that, but while I’m on a roll here, I’d like to rebut various arguments discounting America’s victory at the 2010 Olympic Games.
While the US won the most medals, it did not win the most gold medals and gold medals are what really count. First, let me congratulate the Canadians who, with 14 gold medals, dominated the top tier of the podium more often than any other country. Second, the number of golds is not a good indicator of the best team at the Olympics, it is most often a better indicator of the team with the greatest genetic anomalies, seriously. If you look at medal counts over the vast majority of previous Olympics, it’s easy to see that a single athlete is the cause of a high number of gold medal wins. Think Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt in the last summer Olympics. It’s simply not a good indicator of team performance.
The US only wins because of events created since 1990. Yes, it’s true that Americans have tended to be better at the higher risk sports added to the Games since the early 90’s. At least up until this winter’s Games. In this year’s games, Australians, Chinese, German, Norwegian, Belarus and certainly Canadian athletes often outperformed the Americans. In fact, the reason the Americans won the Olympics is more because of their performance in classic alpine events and even in some nordic events that have been in the games from the beginning.
The US does better in judged events (figure skating, half-pipe, freestyle skiing, etc.) than it does in strictly timed events (slolom, super-G, speed skating, etc.). Statistically this has been true, historically. Most US medals in the past have been in skating and most of those in figure skating. But what does this statement imply – that judged events are somehow invalid and shouldn’t be part of the Olympics? Should style and athleticism not be part of the Olympics? Whatever your take on that question, it is part of the Games. The fact that the US wins its fair share of those events shouldn’t discount the country’s overall achievement.
The US Olympic team is larger than most other teams and has an unfair advantage. If a country sends a huge number of non-competitive athletes, does it affect the number of medals it gets? There is almost no effect. One country having more athletes does not keep another country from having more. A country enters its best athletes in an event. If the country doesn’t have a competitive entry, fewer athletes are entered. Simple as that. There is no penalty for having either more qualified athletes or more unqualified ones, it just makes sense to only bring qualified ones and the US has more than many countries. The only potential advantage for a country with more athletes is that when an injury occurs, they are more likely to still be in a position to take a medal in an event. That only happens, of course, of when the replacement athlete is qualified enough to win.
I could go on and on. They’re simply reasons to take a victory and discount it to make it modestly meaningless. We don’t have to be assholes to celebrate and there is huge upside to celebrating successes, even ones this trivial.
Just one final thought. For those of you still desperate to somehow discredit the US victory at the Olympics here’s a reasonable, IMO, way of doing it. One can argue that the only appropriate measure of success at the Games is the number of medals won per capita – that is, the number of medals won in relation to the number of citizens of the country winning them. Let’s face it, at the level of athleticism required to be the world’s best in any sport, the size of the genetic pool is really a factor. With that in mind and, again according to nationmaster.com, Liechtenstein is far more successful at the Winter Olympics over time than any other nation on the planet. The US falls to 17th place. There you go. We suck after all.
Don’t even get me started about the sorry state of American technological and economic competitiveness and our complete ignorance of what really made the US a great and growing country since it’s inception. We are so caught up with balancing what is politically correct, what is politically achievable and not disrupting paths to reelection that we have forgotten what it’s like to have dreams and to work towards a significantly better or, at least different, future. Because we, as a nation, are so stuck dealing with the present, we have found ourselves mired in a tar pit of legislative nonsense that is slowly killing our chances to be competitive with the rapidly expanding world around us. And yes, being economically competitive is, in fact, necessary if we want to maintain our current societal dreams and values.
Because of the work of a variety of smart and dedicated people, including Paul Graham and my good friend, Brad Feld, one small, but critical cog in the complex machine of government regulation has been given a chance to turn. Yesterday, Senators John Kerry (D) and Richard Luger (R), the two ranking members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed legislation to create a Startup Visa. Simply put, anyone from anywhere who starts a company in the US and is able to reasonably capitalize it can get a visa to stay in this country to develop their business here, on American soil with American employees, paying American taxes. That’s a no-brainer you say? You might be surprised to learn that the country is routinely kicking entrepreneurs out, telling them to start their businesses elsewhere.
These aren’t people who are taking away American jobs. They’re entrepreneurs – people who are creating new technologies, services, products and . . . wait for it . . . jobs. It’s a meritocracy, folks, the best stuff wins. Anyone is allowed to play. That is, for now, if you live here.
The new legislation is supported with over 100 signatures from leading venture capitalists and angel investors throughout the country. I’m honored that my name is included on the list. Not because I’m an investor looking for more deals, but I’m an American with an insanely strong desire to see this country continue to set the pace for the rest of the world when it comes to opportunity and leadership. Relatively speaking, the streets of the US are, in fact, paved with gold. I’d like to see us keep it that way and to provide opportunities for even more Americans to be able to mine it.
BTW, if you want to poke at Congress and have your voice heard on the issue, please yell and scream through your favorite channel or feel free to tweet congress using the Capitol-Dome shaped widget on the left of the page.
OK, maybe not every company. Raw startups – two people in a garage kinda thing – shouldn’t waste their time with anything formal. But young companies – those that are established and on their way, regardless of their size or level of funding should, as should any company more established than that. It seems that we frequently relate having a board of directors to some kind of funding event. Of course, it often happens that way. Investors require one or more board seats, which becomes the impetus for creating a formal board – at least one with non-employees on it. But even without funding, companies should establish and use a board of directors made up of people from inside and outside the company. A board of qualified people can offer great benefits to a company, its management and its founders.
To me, the most important of these is that board members, unlike informal outside advisors, have a fiduciary responsibility to the company and, therefore, offer advice that is often better thought out and more responsible. After all, it’s their job. Additionally, because there is greater long term continuity with board members than other advisors, the input received from directors tends to be more specific, context sensitive and applicable to the company’s long term strategy. Finally, a board tuned in to what the company is doing and how it is doing it can provide dynamic guidance, including a kick in the ass now and then, that advisors without an ongoing, interactive relationship with the company are unable to deliver.
To some new company founders, these advantages may seem to be a bit abstract. In fact, lately, I’ve seen some resistance to the concept of establishing a board of directors entirely. From what I observe, this seems to be primarily driven by three factors:
Fear that creating a formal board will somehow turn control of their baby to their new “boss”
Reluctance to “spend” the equity necessary to recruit and retain quality board members
Belief that they already have advisors who deliver all the guidance they need
Yes, there have been cases where boards have fired CEOs or somehow otherwise wrested control of the company from its leader or founder. I’ve certainly never seen this type of thing from non-investor board members and even with board members who are investors, it’s incredibly rare and definitely a last resort type of move. Virtually no one outside wants your job. If they did, they’d just go start another company or take their money to another playground.
Yes, you will have to compensate outside, non-investor, board members. Don’t be cheap. The compensation will be with equity, likely a single percentage point or lower and vesting over four years. What you will get in return will likely help you immeasurably. It may not be the sole difference between long-term success and short term failure (it might), but the advice you get will at the very least make your life easier and substantially increase your odds for success.
Finally, and I sorta hit on this earlier, having many advisors and mentors is terrific. You shouldn’t have fewer of these when you establish a board – they are always valuable. They do not, however, take the place of a dedicated group of individuals who have committed their efforts and wisdom to the success of the fledgling enterprise. Outside advisors will never have the volume of background data that your directors have to analyze situations nor will they feel the responsibility to do the right thing. Directors are tied to the company’s success and failure. Advisors and mentors are not. There’s a huge difference in responsibility and, ultimately, quality of action.
So there you have it. Do you still have a reasonable excuse for why you shouldn’t establish a board? If so, I’d like to hear it. “It’s hard,” by the way, doesn’t count. You’re an entrepreneur, just work harder and smarter to get it done.
It’s difficult not to respect all that Apple has achieved both as a computer company and as a consumer electronics crack dealer. They have great products and hugely loyal fans customers. Their terrific execution has allowed them to buck the trend of openness by providing what a wide swath of consumers want – a solution that, more often than many others, just works and looks great doing it. Part of the reason that the company has been able to do this is that they haven’t gone it alone. Apple moved from completely proprietary hardware and operating systems to defacto standards (at least at their core, adopting Intel processors and Unix); Parallels/VMWare have opened the Mac up to popular Windows apps; Firefox is the Mac’s primary window to the web world; Adobe, makes sure that Macs have access to the most widely used document and photo formats; and Google inclusion makes sure that Mac users have top notch access to the search giant’s internet tentacles. Apple has wisely leveraged what’s available in the market so they don’t have to take on the entire world at once.
But not so much anymore. It seems that Steve Jobs and Co. have expanded their battlefield beyond just Redmond to the folks at Adobe (Flash, who needs it? Acrobat, we can do that, Lightroom, nah, we have Aperture), Intel (through Apple’s acquisition of PA Semi), Amazon (eBooks, iTunes) and, especially, Google. That’s a lot of fronts to do battle on. Good, aggressive business practice . . . possibly. Hubris . . . likely. While small battles have been brewing for a while with Apple supplying applications that compete on the fringes with several of these players and some of these “partners” pushing onto Apple’s turf, there hasn’t previously been an all-out war. The question is, can Apple maintain its success going it alone? They’re going to have to if they’re going to “go to the mattresses” with all the big guys they have relied on in the past.
A big test will happen this year with tablets. The iPad (the iPhone XXL), will have to rely on the strength of its base of iPhone apps to differentiate it as we will be deluged with a tidal wave of new tablet offerings from a variety of vendors. We’ll see multiple operating systems housed in hardware taking many shapes and forms. Some of these will be strongly supported by Google and will leverage a broad array of Google services, technologies and overall openness. Some will leverage the economies of scale of large PC production to create lower cost offerings with more features. It’ll also be interesting to see what Amazon does at it defends its ebook turf.
I’m by no means saying that the king is going to be dethroned anytime soon, but I do believe that it’s one thing to flank your competition by being different and another to attack frontally going it alone. As a consumer of all the crap these guys produce, I’m loving sitting on the sidelines watching this melee. In the end, it’ll just mean that I get more, better toys. To that end, I’m fully in Apple’s corner for once.
Being a software guy myself, I often find that I dig a little deeper into the successes and failures of the software-oriented startups that I work with than I do with the non-software oriented ones. When I do, I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised, although I routinely am, at how often I come across some very consistent and basic technical errors that are made by these companies. Chief among these is the lack of thorough thinking about the architecture of the end product prior to the start of coding. It’s, of course, natural to start hammering out code as fast as possible in order to get a product to market but, inevitably, the Piper needs to get paid and fundamental problems with the architecture will eventually require a wide-spread rewrite of the system or, even worse, will be a serious resource drain and time sink to in every future release.
You’ve probably read dozens of books that have discussed the importance and value of planning and how time spent in architecting a system is a drop in the bucket compared to the time it saves on the back end. I neither have the skills nor the eloquence to drive that point home any better. What I’d like to do, though, is to present a high-level view of how you might think about the architecture of your product so that it provides a framework for you to make rapid changes to the application and makes it easy for others (partners, customers, etc.) to extend the product in ways you may not have considered.
There is nothing revolutionary here. Let’s just call it a reminder that you will end up rewriting your application or, at least, its framework, in the future if you don’t adopt something like this early on. You may not see it yet, but like I’ve already said, that rewrite is going to be very expensive and painful and will ultimately cost you customers, competitive advantage and money.
The idea here is that there are are two programming interfaces. One separating you’re application from your core libraries or base layer of functions and another separating your application, as well as the lower-level programming interface from the outside world. The lower level, base programming interface, allows you to build an application virtually independent of the core functionality of the end product. Architected this way, you can build and test the application and the base code separately and make incremental changes to each part far easier. In fact, one can be changed without affecting the other as long as the base programming interface remains the same (it needs to be well thought out to start with, of course).
The higher-level programming interface gives you the power to add functionality to your product quickly, using the code in the base programming interface as well as code in the application layer. Using the application programming interface, you can prototype new functions rapidly and get quick fixes for bugs to users faster. Perhaps even more importantly, it enables easy access to most of the guts of your system to partners and customers so that they can extend it as they see fit. This access can be provided without having to publish hooks to the internals of your core system and exposing a boatload of potential problems that foreign calls to those components can create. If you’d like, though, you can also expose some of that base functionality to the high-level API as is shown in the “optional” architecture slice in the image above.
Simple, yes. It requires more work up front – both in planning and in coding – but with such an architecture, you’ll be able to roll out new functionality quickly and to fix mistakes as fast as you find them (well, almost). Ultimately, you’ll get the functionality your customers want into their hands faster than if you hadn’t adopted such a system. You’ll also be able to continue to roll out enhanced and improved functionality without getting bogged down with thinking about an architecture rewrite or with a huge backlog of nasty bug fixes.
The anxiety about getting your product to market will lead you to think that hacking together a system and refining it later is the way to go. Virtually always, this is a mistake. Speed is of the essence, but only the speed which you can deliver sustainable, quality product that continuously stays ahead of the competition. Look before you leap, it’ll make life so much easier.
A few days after my wife and I recently celebrated our 21st anniversary we spent about a week in the Dominican Republic with our kids and some friends. One night, I found myself mesmerized by this fountain (blurry picture above). As I sat with a drink in hand staring at it, I was spellbound with . . . how it worked.
With the streams so consistent in volume, arc and distance, I pondered if there are separate pumps for each stream. Or, perhaps, there is a single pump for the entire fountain with the diameter of the piping varying to control the water pressure at each nozzle. Or, maybe even, there is some air-pressure system that regulates each stream to guarantee all are consistent.
As I was deep in thought considering this critical-to-the-state-of-the-planet problem, my wonderful wife joined me and said, “this fountain is beautiful, isn’t it?” I responded with an answer directly out of the well–trained husband handbook, “yes it is, that’s what I was just thinking.” In a sense, this was completely true. I just saw the beauty of the fountain in a different way.
I spent the rest of the evening thinking about how lucky I am. I love the fact that my wife and I have different, but very compatible perspectives on things. She, of course, rolled her eyes when I explained how I was thinking about it, but she was more than happy to have us both enjoying the view of the fountain each in our own way. Me too. Turns out our entire relationship works that way. Different views of life that the other appreciates and respects. A key to marital bliss? Who knows, but it works for us.
I spent the commencement of the new decade with my family and friends on the beaches of the Dominican Republic. We had a terrific time. Not only because it was 85 degrees instead of 25, as it was back home, but because of the surprising variety of interesting people who stayed at the place we stayed. Roughly, 50% of the guests were Russian, 30% were Latin American and the rest were a mixture of Europeans, Canadians and Americans. While not profound, there were clear cultural differences to observe and it was fun and interesting (impressive, actually) watching the Russians communicating with the Spanish-speaking natives in English. Once again reminding me how Americans are among the least internationally oriented people on the planet – a rant for another post.
At no time were the cultural differences and similarities more visible than at the New Year’s eve celebration on the beach. When we got to the beach, people were standing around, talking in small groups and drinking, of course. A local band was playing but, otherwise, it was all pretty mellow and independent. That was, until the Village People’sYMCA was played by a DJ. The beach came alive – people danced with strangers, old Cold War enemies were high-fiving and people who otherwise had no clue how to ask each other the time of day were playing air guitar in their spontaneously formed bands. Everyone, regardless of where they came from or what their native tongue was knew every word of every verse and, of course, could all spell YMCA with their arms over their heads.
It was great to see and a total blast. The fun and communication continued when the DJ moved on to Michael Jackson’s Dirty Diana but faltered immediately when they shifted back to some very upbeat, but unknown local tunes. It wasn’t the music, after all, that brought the disparate group together, it was shared experience. Songs from the Village People and Michael Jackson broke through international barriers long ago and became part of the culture of billions of people worldwide. Meaningful songs, no, meaningful channels, absolutely – a true international language. Besides, like most things, the more fun they are, the faster they’re adopted. Watching the reach and the commonality of those songs was totally fun. Hearing “It’s fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A” with a heavy Russian accent made the whole trip for me.
I’m fortunate that I get to work with many startups, both independently and with TechStars where I’m a mentor. There is no better way to learn than through teaching (learning is the most fun you can have, at least for a sustained period) and there are few better students than entrepreneurs. Good entrepreneurs always want to know why they should do something and not just what they should do. They test, challenge and refuse to take anything for granted; they’re highly motivated, smart and understand success is not about them as an individual, but about the team they can build; and they strive not only to make their first venture a success but also to become strong, solid leaders and managers that can build many great companies.
So, with all these qualities, it shocks me how often entrepreneurs choose a mentor because they’re the loudest guy in the room. You know that person, the one who likes to talk incessantly about all of his or her accomplishments and is quick to give advice on any and all subjects. The person who speaks before listening and has never had any failures. Yeah, that guy. Somehow, in the sponge-like desire that good entrepreneurs have to vacuum up every morsel of knowledge, they often attach themselves to the first person who sounds like they know anything. Unfortunately, that’s usually the one who brags the loudest.
So, here’s a simple three-step plan on how to avoid adopting Mr./Ms. Know-it-all as your savior:
First, recognize that you’re your only savior, everyone else is there merely to supply data, offer up some wisdom and, maybe, hold your hand.
Second, put yourself in a situation where you can get access to many mentors. You can do a load of legwork or sign up for a program like TechStars where mentorship (and a boat load of mentors to choose from) is the core of the program.
Finally, ask questions. Don’t grill a potential mentor, after all, you’re looking for free help. Instead, have a conversation and learn about what the person has actually done – how they’ve succeeded and how they’ve failed. Make sure they have real accomplishments and real failures (you learn more from failures than successes) and can communicate what they learned in a way that works for you. If hubris is what you hear, try somewhere else.
I’m no psychiatrist, but the loud braggart in the room is probably making up for something else (get your mind out of the gutter, I was referring to some business deficiency) or has had too much to drink. Either way, they do you no good. Be selective, find an adviser with both good advice based on things they’ve actually done plus the ability to communicate they way that works best for you. You’ll be much happier and likely, more successful yourself.
Some of you (older readers of this blog) might remember the old Saturday Night Live skit that aired in 1976 with Dan Akroid, Gilda Radner and Chevy Chase in which they argue whether a canned substance by the name of New Shimmer is a floor wax or dessert topping. As you’d expect from an SNL commercial parody, it’s both.
After using Adobe Lightroom for about a year now, I remain similarly confused about what, exactly, it is. Is it a photo editor or is it an asset management tool? Well, it’s both; and neither. Whatever it is, once you know how to use it, it’s a great tool for doing . . . stuff with your pictures. Let me explain.
In a photo processing workflow, there is generally a tool for managing photos and how they are stored. That is, where they are located (locally or remotely) and how they are organized in directory structures and with their metadata. And, there is a tool for processing or editing photos – actually adjusting the way the photo looks. Sometimes, these are the same tools. Most often, however, best of breed tools win out and photographers use separate tools for each function.
Adobe develops the 800-pound gorilla in the photo editing business – Photoshop. It’s the absolute leader in the segment. It’s robust, has a million features and loads of add-ons available from third parties. It also has a huge learning curve and an arcane user interface. It’s meant to address the needs of a broad range of people, not just photographers. As such, photographers have to sift through a boatload of functions that they will likely never use and learn techniques to make changes to photographs that aren’t always aligned with how photographers think.
On the asset management side, even Adobe doesn’t try to pack in organizational functions into it’s behemoth. Adobe has another product called Bridge to fill that roll. IMO, Bridge doesn’t cut it for many reasons. It appears to be primarily designed to front-end Photoshop and as such, is stuck with some of the same non-photographic concepts that weigh down its big brother. It’s also slow. To me, speed is an absolute critical factor in asset management. Especially considering that gigabytes worth of photo data are often somewhere on the network, not stored on a local disk drive. The asset management tool needs to be ultra-fast to overcome network latency.
To address these issues, Adobe came up with Lightroom (actually, it came with Macromedia as part of Adobe’s acquisition of the company). Lightroom is for photographers – it has a photographic workflow, including asset management tools and photo editing functions. It doesn’t have all the asset management tools of some dedicated asset management products and certainly doesn’t have all the editing capabilities of Photoshop, but as you get to know it and use it more often, it seems to strike the right balance between the functions and in a way that’s mostly logical to the photographer.
In terms of photo management, Lightroom isn’t as good as my long-time favorite tool, ACDSee Pro. ACDSee is fast and it’s storage paradigm parallels that of a standard directory tree, making it a natural and easy to understand extension of how the files are physically stored. I was never in love with ACDSee’s metadata handling though and even though it has editing tools built in, I really had to export photos to Photoshop to get what I wanted done. The breadth of photo metadata is much easier to manage in Lightroom, but the way photos are managed isn’t as logical.
What’s hard to get used to about Lightroom is that Lightroom maintains all it’s data about a photo in a separate database. That is, not in the photo file itself. So, while the database and photos aren’t physically connected, they are both necessary to reconstruct any changes made to the photo. This is not only true for the photo’s metadata, but also for edits to it. If you brush over some skin to remove your kids’ zits, those changes are in the database and not in the file. If you change the IPTC data to give the photo a caption, that’s in the database and not in the photo file. This separation takes a while to get used to, especially if you use other tools in your workflow. If you grab the JPEG you just edited in Lightroom in a new tool, you’ll get the original file and not the modified one.
For sure, you can write metadata changes in the Lightroom database out to the file. You just have to remember to do that, it’s not automatic. Writing the editing changes is another thing all together. This requires “exporting” the file from Lightroom which, at it’s best, is a bit confusing. In the end, like most things Adobe, you have to choose to make Lightroom the cornerstone of your workflow and adopt the way it wants to do things.
That sounds bad, except it does so much so well. In fact, there aren’t many reasons why Lightroom can’t be the only tool used by the photographer. No only can metadata be managed as discussed above, but the editing functions are broad and deep. For those that know about Adobe’s RAW photo handling, Lightroom’s Develop module does all that Adobe RAW does and more. In my experience, I can make almost all the adjustments to photos that I want without ever leaving Lightroom. For the few things that Lightroom doesn’t do, I can easily export to Photoshop to get done. For you Photoshop geeks, Lightroom doesn’t have layers, but you can mask areas of the photo. There are also no tools for HDR, stitching panoramas and the like. For those, you have to export to the mother ship, Photoshop, which is pretty easy because . . . Adobe wants you to do it.
So, Lightroom is a dessert topping and a floor wax. It’s a photo asset management tool and editor. In my experience, it’s also the best all-around digital photo tool available. As usual (with Adobe products), the learning curve is relatively steep, although nothing like for tools like Photoshop. Once you know how to use it (there is loads of help from users on the web), you can modify your photos amazingly fast, create some really cool effects and, ultimately morph the picture in your camera into the one that was in your head to start with. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?
March 8th, 2010 | 
A few weeks ago, I ran across a box full of photos I had taken a while back. Actually, they were color slides, which should give you some idea of how old they are. Many of them were of people, events and even documents (photos of documents? Don’t even ask, I can’t remember why) from my second startup (actually, my third, but it was the second one I founded). The company was originally named Qualogy Technology, but wiser minds prevailed and it was later changed to Viewlogic Systems.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=9d61da24-3d19-44fd-9a75-1ae410adcd71)
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