My email account has always been a pseudo to-do list that I actively attempted to work through. Last year I was turned to the idea of striving to achieve the zero inbox due to a tweet by Tim Walker exclaiming his current zero inbox mastery.  Over the year I would occasionally hit the zero inbox in an individual account, but today I finally hit it in all my active email accounts, a true zen moment knowing that I have absolutely zero emails awaiting.

I have a handful of accounts, but pictured below are my two main accounts.

My empty personal email account. =)

My empty work account. =)

How To Achieve the Zero Inbox

There are a handful of strategies and techniques that can be implemented, but the following worked the best for me.

1. Organize Emails by Type – Tim Walker writes a great post titled Inbox-Fu: The Mystery of Resadoth.  Essentially you need separate your emails by type.  Tim suggests folders, whereas I left them all in the inbox but would address each type in the appropriate order.  Essentially you want to separate into “Read”, “Say”, “Do” and “Think” which Tim suggests addressing in reverse order.  I noticed that in each email session I would address all 4 of the email types, always finishing by with a couple of the “read” emails.
2. You Don’t Have to Answer – Just because you get an email, doesn’t mean you have to respond.  If the email lacks a question or any reason to respond (besides a nicety), archive it.
3. Be Succinct – Get to the point of the email briefly. It is easier for you to write and easier for your reader to respond.
4. Set A Goal – Set a goal of how many emails to accomplish in a day and stick to it. If the goal is 20, complete ALL 20.
5. Focus On One Task – Emails can be a time suck. Decide how long you want to work on the inbox, and focus solely on that task.  When done, close down your email and work on another project.
6. Emails Don’t Age Nicely – Unlike wine, emails don’t get better with time.  If you haven’t responded to an email for 6+ months, it obviously isn’t important. Archive it.
7. Utilize Your Mobile Phone – Have a couple minutes on the train?  Waiting for someone to show for an appointment?  Hurry and knock out a couple emails on your blackberry or mobile device.  Make those spare minutes valuable.

Tim has written a handful of excellent posts on what he calls Inbox-Fu.

• Inbox-Fu: The Mystery of Resadoth
• Ten Handy Tips to Build Your Inbox-Fu
• 11 Ancient Secrets of the Dragon Claw School of Inbox-Fu

What about you readers? What techniques work for you?

An S.O.S. To Silicon Valley 
Sramana Mitra 10.10.08, 6:00 AM ET

An Open Letter to the Leaders of Silicon Valley:

The world needs you.

You, more than anyone else, have the track record of rejuvenating an economy in dire straits.

We have, today, an economy Washington will not be able to handle–and that Wall Street certainly can’t handle. It is you, Silicon Valley, who needs to step up to the plate.

Remember the Clinton years? Sure, Bill Clinton takes credit for the prosperity, but anyone who pays attention knows that ’90s boom was Silicon Valley’s doing. Valley-inspired entrepreneurship washed away most of the $300 billion deficit that haunted the U.S. economy early in the decade.

The Internet created millions of jobs through active entrepreneurship, and Silicon Valley gave life to the Internet through bold and visionary investing. John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers set the Internet bonanza in motion with his investment in Marc Andreessen’s Netscape, followed by Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.com. Sequoia’s Mike Moritz followed by putting money into the hands of Jerry Yang and his fellow Yahoos. The guys at Benchmark backed Pierre Omidyar’s eBay in 1997. And eBay alone, as John McCain reminded us this week in the presidential debate, today supports the livelihood of 1.3 million people (see “Stimulus Package For Entrepreneurs”).

Soon, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists were rushing to build companies around e-commerce and search. Many failed, and the market collapsed in 2000–but not before it spawned yet another milestone venture: Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s Google in 1998.

The early years of the 21st century might have seemed dry as the economy tried to recover from the dot-com collapse and the tragedy of 9/11. But during those early years a group of entrepreneurs led by Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com laid the foundation for a whole new movement now known as Software as a Service (SaaS), which has more recently broadened its scope to cloud computing. (See “‘SaaS-ing’ Back At The Economy.”)

Most of Silicon Valley’s VCs missed this trend in the beginning–with one notable exception. Brian Jacobs, Jason Green and Gordon Ritter started a firm called Emergence Capital at a time when Silicon Valley companies stuck to business models built around “products.” Emergence Capital would, instead, invest in “services” companies. Today, its leadership has played a pivotal role in creating a thriving eco-system that supports numerous entrepreneurs building ventures aligned with this trend, and funding is abundantly available for them to move forward. (See my account of Brian Jacobs here.)

John Doerr’s remark, in the middle of the ’90s boom, that the Internet was “underhyped” provoked more than a few snarky comments. But he was right. Now we have SaaS, Web 2.0 and cloud computing–with the prospect of Web 3.0 on the horizon.

Doerr and his former Kleiner colleague Vinod Khosla also provided exemplary leadership in jump-starting the clean-tech industry. T.J. Rogers, then chief executive of Cypress Semiconductor, spotted the trend early as well and invested in SunPower, which has become one of the darlings of the solar-energy boom. From electric cars to alternative energy and clean air to clean water, those early successes are validating the industry’s potential to create wealth. Entrepreneurship is active, jobs are being created and problems will get solved.

In all this, leaders of Silicon Valley, you have identified problems, found technology-leveraged solutions and built industries, not just companies.

I ask you, then, to rise up to the challenge again. Education, health care, social security: These domains need your voices, your intellect, your credibility, your time and your money.

In each of these domains, there are some early successes. Edward Fields is breaking through the morass of education problems with his start-up, HotChalk (see “A Technological Fix For Education”). Kirk Loevner is cracking health care with Epocrates. Their experiences offer some insight into alternative business models, marketing models and approaches to problem solving–most notably using advertising dollars to fund resources for teachers, students, doctors and patients.

In education and health care, a tremendous amount of inefficiencies can be tackled with technology. Barack Obama, if he wins, will need help figuring out how to reform health care and education from within the system without further ballooning the deficit.

In 2007, the U.S. spent about $2.26 trillion on health care, or $7,439 per person. It spends $1,000 per year per person in administrative costs, which puts the cost of the system at over $250 billion. This jaw-dropping number stares at me like a bottomless sewage pit of wasted resources, yet it’s also an indicator of where technology can make huge improvements.

Education faces similar problems. Administrative costs eat up budgets, leaving little left over for teachers.

As the smart-phone movement marches on, led by Steve Jobs’ iPhone, can we not create seamless bridges between doctors, patients and insurance providers that can reduce the $250 billion expenditure in health care administration?

And on the Internet, can we not create a body of standardized content and methodology for teachers all over the U.S.–or the world–that includes parents in the process and engages children via “edutainment,” the same way MySpace and “World of Warcraft” engage kids?

Leaders of Silicon Valley, your answer to all these questions should be “yes.” Don’t let the current miasma of fear slow you down.

You have to lead. You have to create. You have to build. You have to invest.

You, Silicon Valley, need to pull the U.S. and world economies out of the mess that Wall Street and Washington have created.

I know you can do it.

For the past 2.5 years I have been using the Utah-based start-up mVelopes for my financial management needs. I have really enjoyed the product, finding the user interface intuitive and complementary of my financial management strategy of budgeting first and spending only the allocated capital. Because mVelopes allowed me to support a local company, I truly tried to be an outstanding customer answering every survey sent my way and suggesting the product to numerous friends, a handful of which joined the service. However, in the last couple months the service has become patchy, ridden with connectivity and transaction issues. I am hoping that this is due to an increase in the user base, resulting in business growing pains. Yet, at the same time I can only wait so long for the engineers to resolve these problems as I am a paying customer .

The worst part about the mVelopes issues is the naïve attitude of the customer service. I have had to contact customer service at least 6 times in the past two months, resulting in the customer service agents tip-toe-ing around a real solution to the problem. It seems that they offer a temporary fix, but never offer me an end date for the actual solution nor compensate me for my loss of time and troubles. The connectivity issue is just a pain, but the missing transactions is disconcerting. For instance, once I noticed that I was missing a transaction and so contacted customer support to learn that in reality I was missing 28 transactions over the past 2 months that had hit their servers but weren’t being pushed through to my user interface. No apology, just a simple "we don’t do refunds due to our terms and services."

I would really like to continue using this product; however, I also need a solution that will consistently work.

As I contemplate switching offerings I noticed that the product characteristics that are a necessity for me, include:

• User Interface – I want an user interface that is intuitive. Sure there is a learning curve with any new tool, but I am hoping for something I can figure out relatively quickly that allows me to slice and dice my data (for example I really like being able to see spending over custom time ranges, not just month-to-month).
• Bank Access – When I first checked out Mint last year I couldn’t get access to a regional bank I use. That has now changed, but was obviously a major no when I first looked at the company.
• Security – Many companies in this realm are start-ups, which makes me nervous for two reason. First, have they accurately approached security, encryption and storage? Second, will they still be in business in a year or two and if not, where will my data end up?
• Reliability – These companies are dealing with my financials and must be reliable. What is the point of using a PFM solution if it doesn’t pull all my transactions?
• Live-Chat Customer Service – Customer service is a necessity and live chat is just my personal preference. I personally like "on-demand" help, if needed.

Product characteristics I don’t care about:

• Community – Does the whole web experience need to be social? Many of these companies tout the community aspect and I can see why this might be a draw to some people, but it just isn’t a priority for me to talk to strangers concerning my finances. Aggregation of articles and sites, sure. Random strangers giving me advice, not so important.

Players in this space include the following:

Company: Mint
Software / Online: Online
User Interface: Very good
Bank Access: 6,500 banks
Budget Capabilities: Yes, but as a goal section rather than priority
Reporting: Yes
Investment Monitoring: Yes, but still in private beta
Community: No
Security: Verisign, HackerSafe, Truste, plus they do not record the user’s actual name, only email address. Mint provides a whole video of their CEO speaking solely to security plus a scroll down page with each point thoroughly discussed.
Reliabilty: Unkown as I have had limited use
Customer Service: Email only.
Comments: This company has been hyped, but for some reason has never quite worked for me the four times I have given it a shot. Today was the first time I could successful add accounts, only having problems with one regional bank that has image verification security. I figured I would try contacting customer support with the issue. No live chat, but an email function that automatically responded back to me with a “help is on the way” kind of thing (nice). The email said they would contact me concerning the issue within 24 – 48 hours, yet over-promised and under-delivered as I have yet to hear back after 72 hours. One interesting feature is the user can input in his/her zipcode and get a benchmark of what others in the area spend in each category.
Price: Free

Company: mVelopes
Software / Online: Online
User Interface: Very good. The layout structure works really well for me but the company could make it look a little more professional.
Bank Access: 14,459 banks
Budget Capabilities: Yes, with a focus on the user sticking to a budget. The user sets asides the money in envelopes and when it is gone it is gone, unless the user pulls money from other envelopes.
Reporting: Yes, but I wish it had more features.
Investment Monitoring: No
Community: Yes, but quite separate from the main user face, which is nice
Security: Verisign, BBBOnline Reliability Program, Security Metrics Certified. The company provides a whole page discussing SSL, Session Management, Firewall Protection, etc.
Reliability: For the first couple years the product was fantastic. Within the past 3 – 4 months it has been have some issues.
Customer Service: A user can call, email or use live chat.
Comments: The company has been having some technical difficulties, specifically with connectivity (as mentioned earlier in my post). I really like the structure of the user interface as it makes the user think in terms of budgeting and staying within that budget. I wish their reporting capabilities where a little bit better and offered custom time frames. I do like supporting a local team, but their customer service has been hard to work with and would be the breaking point on why I switched services.
Price: ~$5 – 10 depending on the years of commitment.

Company: Wesabe
Software / Online: Online
User Interface: Ok. A downloadable toolbar or software is necessary to add banks. I have given this company a try on two occasions and this step has temporarily stalled me from continuing to the next phases both times.
Bank Access: Unsure on exact number, but both my regional banks were listed.
Budget Capabilities: Yes, in a goal tab. I wish they had budgeting set up as a priority rather than an afterthought.
Reporting: Yes
Investment Monitoring: No
Community: Yes, but too much. The community is mixed in with the interface and I want my financials to seem private.
Security: The company implements “industry-standard encryption” and strips each user account of personal identifiers.
Reliability: I have not used enough to comment in this area
Customer Service: Email only.
Comments: When adding a bank account it re-directs to the bank page and then back to the Wesabe site. I think I read this had something to do with keeping the passwords straight between the banks and community. I don’t thoroughly understand the technicalities of why they do this, but I don’t like that I feel as if I am leaving the main Wesabe site.
Price: Free

Company: Buxfer
Software / Online: Online
User Interface: Very Good
Bank Access: Unsure on number of banks, but both my regional banks were listed.
Budget Capabilities: Yes, but once again an after thought, not a priority
Reporting: Yes
Investment Monitoring: No
Security: A little hard to track down on the site. They state that they follow “industry standard encryption techniques and practices”, plus comment that passwords are encrypted prior to storage, transferred through SSL and decrypted only during authentication.
Reliability: I have not used enough to comment.
Customer Service: Email only.
Community: Unsure. It says you can add groups, but it appears that it adds people you know through email.
Comments: None.
Price: Free

Company: Yodlee Money Center
No demo was available and I didn’t want to just cough up my information. No review.

Company: Intuit Quiken for Mac (I am a Mac user so this would be the one of interest to me)
Software / Online: Both
User Interface: Very good but perhaps a little too technical that it isn’t completely user friendly
Budget Capabilities: Yes
Reporting: Yes, plus allowing custom date ranges
Investment Monitoring: Yes
Community: Yes
Bank Access: Unsure on actual number, but both my regional banks were listed.
Customer Service: A user can call, request a call back, email, chat, or check out their social media sites of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.
Comments: This is definitely the most professional option for personal finance that also includes reminders for bills and a tax tracking area. I am unsure if it autosyncs transactions or if the user must actually download into the software.
Price: $69 for software ($53 with very accessible coupons) plus $2.99 for online version

After looking at this breakdown, it seems that many of the web players focus on limited functionality but with a free price tag. When it comes to my finances, I would happily pay if I felt the solution was helping me to save money, assisted in thoroughly tracking my finances and still allowed me access to customer service when needed. Looking at the competitors I still lean towards mVelopes, of which my subscription expires in January and at which time I will re-assess. I am truly hoping that their technical issues are resolved at that point, otherwise, I might have to make the move towards Intuit.

This last addition is the only one that stumps me as these Google Ads (of course) point to competitive sites. I have heard that the markup on retail items can often dance to the 100% line, whereas ads bring in variable prices due to the site’s traffic. I would think that it would be more profitable to swap the web real estate of their comparison ads with the google ads, unless of course Steep And Cheap receives enough traffic and click throughs to outweigh their discounted inventory markup.

Google Adsense on the top right corner of the landing page.

Comparative Backcountry ads are seen when scrolled to the next page.

According to Alexa and Compete, the site sees approximate traffic of about 110k users per month creating visits totaling just over 1m, indicating that the same people are repeatedly visiting the site. (Please note that traffic numbers are extremely hard to quantify through the counting of IP Address visits.)

I mentioned my confusion to a friend who would be familiar with the details of the site. He told me some interesting facts and tidbits, but didn’t know the revenue comparison of the two ad types. I hear the advertising model pitched on a frequent basis but time and again see that it brings in substantial less revenues than expected, with many companies changing or augmenting their revenue model. If any of you readers have a better understanding of clickthroughs, revenue benchmarks that correlate to traffic (if such a thing actually exists, which I doubt), etc. I would be interested in chatting with you. I realize that the revenues will vary by site and the level of how targeted the ads are that are being used, but would welcome any comments or feedback.

Last year I posted about the due diligence process and a business plan breakdown, but over time my viewpoints on analysis have slightly shifted. It seems that a good portion of deals I review are past the earliest stage and have added a couple members of management and possibly infused seed capital. For the past couple months I have been experimenting with the approach of looking at each company from the view points of opportunity and the company’s ability to capture this opportunity.

The opportunity of a deal consists of the main pieces of why and how a problem is being solved, i.e. the technology, product, business model and market. Basically the analysis of ‘is this a technology that can be used to create a product that is needed (and wanted) in the marketplace and priced in a range that will attract consumer dollars.’

The opportunity ‘capturability’ (no, this is not really a word but I have yet to find an accurate descriptor) lies in the factors that will push the aforementioned opportunity into fruition, a trickier mix of variables to encounter. The ability to capitalize on an opportunity analyzes the competition and the levels of competitive presence in the market, financial stability, market risks … but mostly the strength of the management team. Basically, ‘does the summation of the competitors in the marketplace plus the known risks equal a market gap that can be seized by this management team and the capital they have received?’

The overlay of the ability to capture and the opportunity itself will never perfectly align as the alignment discrepancy is the risk of the deal, the risk the investor must decide if they are willing to take to earn the projected reward.

Right now I am using this approach without quantifying each variable, which would be do-able. I have yet to quantify as it seems that an integral part of our investment decision is based on our gut feel towards the management team, something quite hard to explain in numbers. I also use this approach to simply assist me in thinking about the relationship and correlation of all the business elements.

Below are some of my favorite shirt designs.

Love it!

This is in reference to Colorado-based venture capitalist Brad Feld who has a computer on his treadmill. His blog is great.

This is by far my personal favorite. (Sorry, I hope no one in Utah is offended.)

He he he he… cracks me up!

Friday was the first day of SXSW so the lineup of events was quite small, providing only two panels for the day. After waiting in the line for my badge and meeting the EchoDitto crew, I headed over to the Dabble, Dabble Toil and Kick Ass career related panel. Nothing new or novel there, but no biggie as it was the first panel of the event. Next I headed off to the Bankrupt Your Startup Panel with panelists Andrew Hyde (startupweekend.com and the recent vcwear.com), Joshua Strebel (Obu Web Technologies), Sean Tierney (Jumpbox) and a unicorn. Yes, you read that right. A unicorn. The panel had so much potential, but none was achieved as the whole event was a joke with Godzilla slides and money being thrown around. Once again, no biggie. Still just the first day at SXSW.

That night I hit up the Friday Night Mix at Six and met some great people such as Michael Pilla of Indie Flix, Robb Wood of an uber stealth project and the Path 101 team consisting of my blogger friend Charlie O’donnell, Danielle Collins and Alex Lines. The crew of us headed over to grab some dinner with some friends of Charlie’s at Opal. The dinner gang included Josh Guttman of Sphere, Jason Falls of Doe Anderson, Richard McGinnis of Radian6, Shawn Morton of CNet and Profilactic, Nick Huhn of Yum! Brands, and Todd Earwood and Nicky “Lindy” Key of DailyIdea.tv. Good times!

Danielle Collins and me.

Jason Falls and Richard McKinnis.

Nicky (Lindy), Todd and Charlie.

I loved the post (and Brad’s list) as I know I also suck at a whole bunch of things. I say this not with a lack of confidence, but more as a realization that I just don’t have the skill set needed in certain areas. Some of my list includes:

• I can not swim. I even took a swim class at a junior college and I seriously can’t master the technique and breathing. I would really love to do a triathlon, but I genuinely could not do the swim portion without a life jacket.
• I have zero cooking abilities. If it requires more than boiling water, it is out for me. I will gladly clean all the dishes and the entire house, but please do not hope for a good meal outside the realm of Kroger Mac and Cheese.
• I don’t deal well with cocky people. They irritate me, especially when I feel like they are clueless on the subject matter at hand. And especially when they put someone down to build themselves up.
• I have a rough time working on one sole project as I am a true multi-tasker. I need variety and get bored with only one thing on my plate.
• I suck at crossing logs over rivers. The log crossing is more treacherous for me than a technical rock climbing route.
• I have a hard time NOT giggling in my personal (and sometimes even work) life. Even while playing poker I can’t hold a straight face. I like to giggle…. it is part of who I am.
• I feel that I struggle to convey my business thoughts and ideas in words. This isn’t yet a lost cause, but is one of the main reasons why I started this blog.
• I can’t watch scary movies and by scary I mean even Ghostbusters.
• I struggle not to over extend myself. I always think that there are more than 24 hours in a day.

Brad briefly mentioned entrepreneurs, to which point I want to re-circle. I feel that I often hear the “story” or only the good aspects that a CEO is trying to spin when coming to talk to the firm. The spin is necessary to an extent in order to engage the investors and sell the positive aspects, yet I also want to know the trouble spots or what the management can’t do. I absolutely love it when someone genuinely tells me that he/she might not be the right CEO upon entering the growth phase of the business. Or that the company really needs someone with more of “x” experience (x being any area of the business). I really appreciate the humble entrepreneurs who have the necessary passion, but are willing to listen to an outside perspective.

I think Brad nailed the idea on the head when he said our weaknesses can actually be a filter and that we can choose to either work to make these areas our strengths or structure our business/life to either outsource or avoid these areas altogether.

Thanks for the post, Brad.