1000 Flowers Bloom

In the Audience for The Price Is Right

A little break from posting about startup stuff - I've been meaning to write up a blog post about our trip to The Price Is Right for a while but things have been so crazy that I never got the chance to do it until this weekend. We didn't get called up as contestants but it was still a blast.

I have to say that it was truly a unique experience and I'm so happy to have done it. The process they make you go through to get in to see the show is a little nutty as you can read below.

A few highlights:

• Bob Barker in his 80s is still super sharp and a very funny man.
• The one thing that you'll never know from watching the show is how loud it is in the studio. Truly deafening. You can  barely hear yourself think. Those directional microphones that they have must be awesome.
• We predicted the cute blond nurses from Tennessee would make it onto the show and were not disappointed!

Timeline below:

Tuesday
9 PM - Fly into LA
10 PM - Eat dinner with friends

Wednesday
12:00 AM - Sleep
3:00 AM - Wake up call from Paul saying we need to get in line early
4:00 AM - Arrive in line. We're in the 90s. Theatre seats ~325.
5:00 AM - Line is stretched around the block.
6:00 AM - Get our "Order of Appearance" numbers. Told to come back at 7:45.
6:30 AM - Go eat a big breakfast. Last meal for about 12 hours.
7:45 AM - Head back to the studio and are put in the "holding area"
8:00 AM - Told to sit in benches according to our "Order of Appearance" number
8:15 AM - Chuck is the warmup MC and gets everyone fired up about the Price is Right. Much chanting ensues.
8:45 AM - They write the Order of Appearance number on our tickets and we are told to come back at 10 AM.
9:30 AM - We meet up with Alex who has arrived late. We try to figure out if there's a way to get him in
10:00 AM - Back in the holding area. We are told in no uncertain terms that we may not leave the holding area. I think that they are afraid of us leaving and giving our tix to someone else. I'm very glad we had a big breakfast.
10:30 AM - Chuck gives his warmup again and goes over the eligibility rules.
11:00 AM - They now give you a contestant badge with your number on it.
1:45 PM - Interview with the producers to see if you're contestant material. They ask who you are and what you do. They crack a few jokes and see if you're up for it.
2:00 PM - Sit down in a new holding area. The way the seating works we are across from the people who got there first in line. These people were waiting about 12 more hours than we were. Met someone who had been on the show 70+ times. Also met someone who had one a showcase showdown in December!
2:20 PM - Get into the studio
2:30 PM - CROWD GOES WILD. Lots of cheering as the episode begins.

Common Threads Between Entrepreneurs

I was doing my morning feed reading when I came across an excellent article by David Chang (via Signal vs. Noise - the 37 signals blog) who runs two amazing restaurants in Manhattan - Momofuku Noodle Bar and Momofuku Ssam Bar. Thanks to Jeremy and Jon for introducing me to them!

So forget the food for a second. David talks about the real issues that he faces running a successful business in a hyper competitive industry. I don't know him but I feel like I've found a kindred spirit.

Who's looked at you on Linked In?

I was just reading on TechCrunch that Linked In has released a feature that allows you to see who has viewed your profile.

When I first read this I thought that it would be disastrous for them. We had done extensive focus groups and surveys around this feature at Tribe. The responses were very interesting. Everyone wanted to see the details of who had viewed their page but did NOT want their profiles shown. In fact there was a very strong negative association with this. Ultimately we decided it wasn't worth the risk of doing this.

Linked In has done something smart which is that you only see the title and company name. If you're in a large organization you still get a large degree of anonymity. The fact that someone in product management from Yahoo looked at my resume is largely meaningless. There are hundreds if not thousands of them.

But then I think of Aggregate Knowledge. If it says that someone from the Product Management team looked at your profile its coming from a very small set of people.

Luckily they have an option to do invisible surfing. I think I'll turn that on.