I’m terrible at predictions.  I know a lot of people who can look at the state of an industry and predict, with only slightly more confidence than accuracy, the future.  I’ve never been one of those people.

But as an avid user of Uber, and an interested observer of Bridj, I can make my first prediction: these two companies are solving an incredibly similar problem.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know what Uber is – the on-demand private ride service that acts as an alternative to hailing a taxi.

Perhaps you are not as familiar with Bridj – a private bus service that began about a year ago, serving routes in Boston not otherwise well served by public transportation.  Brookline to Kendall Sq., for example.

The thing is, Uber just introduced UberPool in Boston, which is just like Uber – except you share your ride with someone else who is going roughly where you are going.  You get a discount and a new friend.

And Bridj doesn’t seem to have fixed routes as much as parts of the city it drives between, as determined by where people request rides.

So they seem to be trying to solve the same problem: How to get multiple people where they want to go as efficiently as possible, in a less permanent way than the transit system.

There’s been a lot of discussion about how Uber is part of the on-demand economy – that it will eventually begin to converge with services like InstaCart, Google Express, Amazon Prime Now, and my personal favorite, Favor (the only way I’ve found to get my favorite restaurant, Life Alive, to deliver to the South End).  But I think they are also trying to solve an additional problem – mass people movement.

The criticisms against Uber are familiar to most people – undercutting the taxi industry, taking jobs away from taxi drivers, etc.  I don’t buy those – I haven’t had Uber drivers who didn’t also need the money – it’s creating jobs for people too.  And the taxi industry in Boston is messed up – you can’t call a cab and have it show up reliably, you can’t always hail them, and the credit card machines are “broken” most of the time.

But Bridj nags at me in a different way – it seems to be taking money away from the public transportation system, in a way that can adversely affect the people who need it most.  If all the affluent people in Boston begin taking private busses, what happens to MBTA revenue necessary to keep public busses running?  You actually can get from Brookline to Kendall via the CT2 bus.  It’s just that affluent people in Boston don’t seem to like the bus.

All that aside, the problem they are both trying to solve is interesting.  It’s mathematically complex to solve perfectly, and still a good logistical challenge to solve imperfectly.  I’ll be keeping my eye on this.

The Sunday night prior to returning to work after maternity leave is horrible.

Maternity leave is weird.  I found it to be a month of adjusting to the disruptive disregulating force that is a newborn, followed by a month of Netflix, followed by a month of waiting for it to be over.  I felt like I was living someone else’s life – someone who chooses to be home with a child.

It’s a lot of caretaking.  It’s endless hours of diapers, feeding, diapers, rocking, diapers, feeding, and more diapers.  It’s small victories (a 45-minute nap in his crib) and defeats (another laundry debacle.)  It’s worrying about breastmilk and rashes and sleeping patterns and the shape of his skull.

It’s a lot of changes to my body and my person – hormones and breastfeeding and healing, both physically and mentally.  It takes longer than I had remembered.

It’s also a massive adjustment period for the entire family – babyDiva (who is more like bigGIrlDiva now) took to miniDivo immediately – she couldn’t have been sweeter or more attentive – “him needs pacifier” “him cold, him need blanket” “I turn on his white noise?” “‘s’okay Micah, we’re coming…!”  But my own adjustment to being two creatures’ mom was not as smooth.

But parts of leave were lovely, too.  miniDivo was small enough that I could put him in a carrier or stroller and get out and do things – like walk around the city, meet friends for lunch, tour the Taza Chocolate factory, and see the Patriots at training camp!  I formed and grew wonderful friendships this summer.

And miniDivo is a great little guy. He’s content, smiles easily, and sleeps well.  He’s happy swatting at his toys.  I give it a week until he reliably sucks his thumb.

On extremely hot or rainy days, I set the standard for binge-watching television. If this kid doesn’t grow up to flip houses, I’ll be very surprised.  Amazon Prime Video and Netflix kept me busy too.

Our family of four got out lots of weekends to parks, farms, and even a trip to the Cape.  We had many family members visit to help out and spend time with us.

But now it’s back to work.  Back to “real life” – which is the life I want and the life I choose.  A life of technology marketing and startup challenges, of professional growth.  I am fortunate to have a good job to be returning to, with broadening responsibilities, at a company with colleagues and management that respected my time off but eagerly await my return.  And I am eager to get back – to figure out what has changed in the past 3 months, what deals have closed, what initiatives have begun, and feel out the subtleties of culture that have changed over the summer.

I said that maternity leave is weird.  It’s incredibly weird to be out of work for 3 months, then return and pick right up again.  It’s like being at a water station in the middle of a race, taking a break, watching people run by, and then starting up again.  The team will be at VMworld this week, and come back next week energized and excited from a shared experience, while I will still be figuring out how to do this.

miniDivo will go the same daycare babyDivo did/does, so that is all set.  But I wish it were October 1 already.  I wish I could skip the next few weeks of figuring out how we manage daycare drop off and pick up, nightly routines, pumping and bottles, while settling back in to work and just find the “new normal” already.

So Sunday Night Blues it is.  Epic Sunday Night Blues.

Last year, after meticulous research, and extensive hemming and hawing, I bought a tablet.  I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1″.

And I’ve kind of hated it since it arrived.

I tried to like it.  I love my phone (Nexus 5, previously a Samsung S2), and believe in Android.  I downloaded all my favorite apps, set up my background picture, and lounged on the couch, waiting for the magic.

Except I think I’m not a tablet person.

I love using my phone – shopping on Amazon, reading articles in Feedly and Pocket, and using Gmail, Facebook and Twitter.  I play some games and do a lot of reading.

But I haven’t taken to the tablet.  I don’t like not having a physical keyboard, and I find that when I am using a device the size of the tablet, I expect it to behave like a desktop.  It’s like the difficulty I had when switching from Windows to Mac (not having the right buttons or control over the right things), but an order of magnitude worse.

I knew I didn’t like the tablet from the get-go, but I figured when I was on maternity leave I’d use it a lot.  I knew that as a person I hate new things, particularly new technology, so I didn’t return it right away.  I figured I’d want a device to browse on one-handedly, while tending to miniDivo on the other hand.  Or that I’d just find it convenient.

I don’t.  I use my phone for most things, and my MacBook for writing longer missives, or if a page doesn’t work well on mobile.

I’m curious what an Android laptop would feel like – maybe that will be my next acquisition.

I’m half way through my maternity leave.  MiniDivo is doing great, and the rest of us are also happily adjusting to the “new normal.”

Being away from my job gives me a chance to daydream.  Believe you me I am not daydreaming about being home permanently with kids.  That life is not for me.  But there are several other careers I can imagine having had in another life.  Not like “movie star” or “olympian” but actual normal jobs that normal people have that I know some other Sheryl in some other universe is doing right now.

1. Traffic Engineer.  Being out and about in the city all day, I get to see a lot of traffic flow and intersections.  The best intersection is the one at Cambridge St and Mass Ave in Harvard Square where the left lane can turn right and the right lane can turn left.  I find that intersection completely aesthetically awesome and clever.  I also can tell you about all sorts of walk signs that blink at the wrong time (false negatives, not false positives, but still).  I actually know a friend of a friend who has this job and I swear I’d love it.

2. Forensic Accountant.  There is no part of me that could be a detective or a police officer or even a crime lab tech.  But I could totally hunt through hundreds of pages (screens?) of financial data to track what happened to different transactions and where the money went.  The idea that the answer is there but someone has to find it is so appealing to me.  I’d be great at finding anomalies and missing money.

3. Math Teacher.  When I was in high school, my friends all though I was going to become a math teacher.  I love explaining how things work and teaching people how to figure it out themselves.  (I had a pretty good tutoring run in high school.)  I loved math – and I was lazy.  I used to derive the quadratic formula during exams rather than memorize it.

4. PhD in Theoretical Computer Science.  I’m not saying that I could have gotten in to a PhD program or that I would have finished it, but I am saying that for the final exam in my theoretical computer science class in college I finished in 25 minutes when everyone else took 3 hours.  I figured that I either totally got it or totally blew it.  It was the former.  Figuring out how a Turing machine would process a certain problem or how to reduce different problems to be like (or unlike) Traveling Salesperson was just a logical extension of the brain teasers I had been doing my entire childhood.  I may have been the only person who thought that class was “fun.”

Never fear, I’m not jumping off the Product Marketing ship anytime soon.  Just doing some daydreaming.  As Gavin DeGraw sings, “I don’t want to be anything other than me.”

I’ve taken a little hiatus from blogging while on maternity leave.  More on that in a future post but the TL;DR version is that it’s a lot of diapers, figuring out strategic times and places to sleep, and too much laundry.  MiniDivo is doing great – and babyDiva is an attentive big sister.

But I did notice something about online purchases (of which we make quite a few) that seemed worthy of comment.

Impulse purchases used to be made in stores.  You went into Target or Whole Foods or somewhere else for a few items, but something caught your eye and suddenly you were pushing a full shopping cart out to the car.  Maybe your favorite sports drink was on sale or maybe you saw some throw pillows you had to have or maybe it was just that you realized you were short on toilet paper.

But impulse purchasing is done differently now.  When I need something at home – and that might be diapers, shout wipes, an Abby Cadabby doll, granola bars, face soap, ziploc bags, dog food, or vitamins (for example) – I open my Amazon app and order it.  Two days later it arrives.

I don’t keep a shopping list for the week and then on the way to Target think through which items I “really” need.

I don’t exhaustively search the places in our house where we store things and ensure that we “really” are out of said item.

And I don’t wait for things to be on sale or comparison shop.

I have the impulse to buy it and so I do.  So the game for the retailer of how to increase impulse sales is no longer about what merchandise to put on endcaps or in the checkout lane.  That’s good news for my wallet.  Rarely with online purchases do I actually buy a “suggested for you” item or have something catch my eye like it would in a brick and mortar store.

But the bad news for my wallet is that the retailer has made it as easy as possible for me to order: a simply navigable app, one-click purchasing, 2-day shipping, good return policy.  My credit card is saved so I barely even notice when I spend money.  That’s all bad news for my wallet.

Impulse purchases occur at home these days.  And for a sleep-deprived parent of an infant, they are quite common.

A few weeks ago was Take our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.  As some background if you’re not familiar with it, this began as Take our Daughters to Work Day in 1992.  The idea was that girls were not being exposed enough to careers and the workforce, so there would be a designated day when they’d go to work with one of their parents.  The supposition at the time was that this was less of an issue for boys, which seems credible.

Daughter of progressive parents, I participated in the first (or maybe second) Take Your Daughter day.  I went into Manhattan from suburban NJ with my dad on the NJ Transit train, and spent the day with him.  It wasn’t the first time I went into his office, but I vaguely remember being introduced to a few of his female colleagues, and their being a short talk about careers.

I remember thinking it was cool but that I still didn’t really know what my dad did.  As Arlo Guthrie said, “And he talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said. But we had fun fillin’ out the forms and playin’ with the pencils on the bench there.” (Spoiler Alert: he held a variety of technical sales and strategy roles for Teradata/NCR over his career.)

For me, just going into work with my dad wasn’t going to make or break my career plans.  It was the years of seeing both my parents work, and being asked about what I was learning in school, and of being encouraged to try increasingly challenging courses that had more of an impact.  It was the Eleanor Roosevelt quotation on our fridge (“Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”) and the encouragement to be a woman but not to let that limit what I wanted that made more of a difference.

Not to say that I don’t believe in Take Your Daughter to Work Day.  On the contrary – I do, to the nth degree.  Because not everyone grew up in my household, and I’m sure it has opened myriad dialogues between parents and girls that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.  And let’s face it, It was fun to see his office and buy a bagel off a truck.

It was fun to spend the time with my dad.  For the child of two working parents, I spent a lot of time with them – we had dinner together every night, and we did lots of activities together on weekends (museums, parks, even a multi-year stint attending the opera).  But it was fun to experience his commute, see his office, meet his colleagues, and go through the whole day with him.

These days, the program has expanded to be Take Your Daughter or Son to Work Day.  That’s probably fair, and if I end up with children of both genders, I’ll want to include them both.  I just hope that doesn’t compromise girls’ experiences – this article suggests that the program is no longer feminist, but American. There’s also a foundation and consistent programming, and all the things that go along with grass roots initiatives turning into Foundations.

I read a lot of criticism about the program, too.  Some declared it classist, citing that custodians and factory workers aren’t eager to bring their daughters to work with them. Other articles represented the stay-at-home-parent perspective and the confusion over what to do in that situation.  Those both seemed to be reasonable responses that as a society we need to address. (In fact, Obama addressed the nation, asking people to bring kids from their community to their workplaces.)  But other articles indicated that it was an “outdated relic of 1970s feminism.” (Hello, have you been to Silicon Valley lately?)

Some of the other criticism I read is that while a woman would “love to have a show-and-tell with my 18-month-old at my family-friendly office” it would be short-lived and that he doesn’t really belong there. I agree. Your kid is 18-months old.  I didn’t bring my 2 year old to work this year.  Other people commented that they wouldn’t be able to productive with their kid there. No kidding.  It’s not a day about productivity.

One point of view that really got under my skin was commentary advocating a “leave your job at work” day as an alternative, stating that the bridge between work and home has narrowed, so her son already sees a lot of her work accomplishments.  She thinks the best thing she can do that day is come home from work and stop working.  I guess it depends what you’re trying to teach your kid, but there are plenty of other work days when you can do that  – this one is designed to show them what you do at work – when the are old enough to appreciate it.

Another article that got under my skin was about how a news reporter didn’t see a lot of value in her kids coming to work with her, and didn’t want them to become news reporters because journalism was a dying art.  I think she’s missing the point.  It’s just good for her kids to see her do her job where she does it – it’s not about whether they go do that job themselves.

Perhaps this summed up how I feel the best.  I didn’t like this article, because it was more of missing the point.  But one woman quoted in it said,

“Between the school vacations, parent-teacher conference days, completely incomprehensible no-school days, and sick days, my kids are regular fixtures in my office. The thought of taking them out of school for yet another day for this gives me hives.”

That did not resonate with me – who has their kids at their office that much?  But then,

Granted, she added, she’s not against the idea in general. “Exposing our kids to what we do when we are not driving them to practices, games, school, and making them dinner is an important and really valuable exercise. If you work in an environment in which you cannot bring your kids to work on a normal day, then it makes much more sense.”

Aha.

I am reminded of this video – I think I’ve posted it on my blog before, but I love it so much.  I have 1.9 kids right now, so I’m no expert, but I think what little kids (until they are teens?) want the most is to spend time with their parents.  And if work is 50 hours of my week, then taking my daughter to work with me once a year will be important to her, and not a sacrifice for me.

One of the cooler parts of being part of a software startup has been having direct involvement in how we prioritize features.  I get to see the list of potential features, the expected costs for implementing them, and then contribute to the discussion of which ones we choose to implement in what order.

• “How big a deal would it be if we didn’t do XYZ this release?”
• “Do you think we should implement ABC before DEF, even if it will delay the release?”
• “What if we break PQR in the next release and don’t fix it for a few months – is that a big deal?”

These are the types of questions we grapple with as we decide how to put a software release together.  And doing a good job of answering them should be based on the impact they have to existing and prospective customers.

Being a part of this process reminds me of when I took a Product Development course in grad school.  Suddenly I understood why it could take 18 months to get from a customer request to an implemented features.  I could understand why even though I felt like all my customers wanted a particular feature, it wasn’t be implemented in favor of other features.

Which is basically what happened this weekend when I went to watch a movie on DirecTV. mrDiva had taken babyDiva to see his parents for the weekend, so I was on my own.  I ordered takeout, took out the ice cream, and prepared to settle in to watch The Hundred Foot Journey.

Then an interesting message popped up.  “Pressing “OK” will authorize you to watch on this receiver only.  To be eligible to watch this on all your receivers, either text [number], go to this URL, or call this number.”

Now, this is a #firstworldproblem if I even heard one.  But DirecTV has conditioned me to start watching things in one room and finish in another.  Whether it’s something I recorded or a free OnDemand option, I can watch it on either DirecTV receiver I have and switch between rooms mid-show.

My first thought was “Jeez, that’s annoying.”  I was planning to watch it downstairs, but I also don’t think about where I’m watching anything because I’m used to switching rooms.  I was annoyed that I had to think about that.  Then my next thought was, “It seems easier to stay put and watch this downstairs than to text, go online, or call to order this movie.”

And my final thought was, “OOOH, some product marketing and product management people knew this was going to happen.  They are keeping an eye on how many people just say OK and how many actually do one of the other things to determine if it’s worth implementing.  There must be some legacy technical thing that made it tricky to implement this so they are deciding whether it’s worth it.”

I felt pretty proud of myself.

PS: The movie was OK.  I watched Chef the next night which I liked a lot more.

The other day I had a really good idea.  Just one, and it wasn’t a big one.  But it solved a problem
we had been having at work and it came to me in a quiet moment after hours of meetings and conference calls weren’t solving the problem.

It was easy, and kind of obvious.  And after I came up with it I was reminded of George Costanza’s “going out on a high note” bit.  I felt like, “oh good – I had this idea!  I’m done for today.”

How much time things take versus how much value they provide is an interesting calculus. Sometimes you need to take some time to let ideas marinate and it doesn’t feel productive but you can’t speed it up.  Sometimes you come up with a good idea what seems like quickly, forgetting all the marination that occurred in the background.

When I started in marketing at Dell I remember my first task was to put together a set of materials around our pre-validated stacks of servers, storage, and networking.  I took a first swing at it and it was terrible.  I was used to a technical 1:1 sale and here I was instead trying to build a 1:many high-level storyline.

There was one slide in particular – the linchpin of the story – that I just couldn’t get right.  One day I locked myself in a room and didn’t come out until it was done.  It took nearly four hours, and all I had to show for it was one slide.  And yet my manager was complimentary – “You got it,” he said, “that’s the story we’re trying to tell.”  And he shared that he thought that sometimes all you could do in a day was produce one really strategic piece of work, in this case, just one slide.

He is a good manager, and one who values this concept of things taking time.  He taught me about how much time needs to be in people’s work plans to allow for on-boarding and education, and how important those things are as investments in later productivity.  Of course, applying those concepts at a startup is not easy, but it’s a good guide I think back to a lot.

As for George Costanza – would that I could have just one good idea or quip a day, then leave on a high note.  For good or bad, my responsibilities are more complex that that.

Current readers of my blog know that I learn a lot about marketing and sales from my experiences as a consumer.  Last week I was at Barnes and Noble and learned something selling.  Here goes.

For me, books have always been my happy place, in a slightly obsessive way.  Not like, “I like to read for 15 minutes before bed and on the T” but as NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan puts it, “It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.”

When mrDiva says, “you’re having a tough week, go do something fun for yourself, I don’t think “spa” or “gym” or “girlfriends”, I think “bookstore.”

So last week after a bout with a nasty flu, when I was supposed to have a relaxing week while babyDiva vacationed with my parents, and instead I had a Love it or List it marathon while I moaned, alone, on the couch, I decided a trip to Barnes and Noble was in order.

I have had beef with Barnes and Noble in the past – the real estate they dedicated to the Nook impinged on my browsing area, and I still resent that.  But this time when I went to the store, I lucked out – there were several books on the first few curated tables (“New fiction” “Must-read non-fiction”) that caught my attention, and I happily struggled to the checkout with my armful of treasures.

Enter the Barnes and Noble Members’ program.

The Members’ program is not a bad deal – for $25 you get extra discounts every time you shop, and if you buy a lot of books, there’s a pretty good ROI on that.  Except I don’t want to be a member.  Because reading and buying books is a treat for me, it’s a luxury.  I want to go to the checkout and hand over a credit card and not think about the cost because I’m enjoying myself. I don’t want to feel guilty every time I order a book from Amazon, like I should instead be buying it from Barnes and Noble (I get it, that’s why the program exists).

But the cashiers are in violent opposition to my point of view – “Are you part of our Members’ program?” “Do you know how the program works?” “Would you like to join?” “You’d already save $9 today!”  That is not a sampling of the kinds of things they say – that’s one set of encouragement I got at one visit.

And it killed my mojo.  It made me feel less excited about my reward of buying myself some books after a tough week.  Suddenly, my book reverie was broken and I was back in the real world.  And I didn’t like it.

I have a friend who used to manage Marketing for a casual dining restaurant chain.  She said one of the trends in the industry was that their servers were being trained to “read the table” and look for signs that they fit the profile of people who (e.g.,) wanted to hear the specials, just wanted to order, were going to have a round of drinks before ordering, were going to order dessert, etc.  The chain had determined that they could increase the revenue per table if the guests were “read” correctly and offered the right things at the right times.

That’s what it felt like Barnes and Noble was missing.  The cashier was not “reading” my disinterest and instead was just following his script.  I’m not convinced that is in the best interest of Barnes and Noble – it makes me dread going to the cashier, which I can’t imagine is good news for a retailer.

Are we doing this for our customers?  Are we reading their cues to understand what they are open to and when to stop offering things?  How do we read those cues in an enterprise sales cycle rather than a retail environment?  Because I’m sure they’re there.  It’s something to aspire to.

With the impending arrival of miniDiva/o, we’re in the market for a new car.  Our 2008 sedan just isn’t going to cut it anymore once we add a 2nd carseat.

I thought it would be most efficient to write a letter to anyone who might be interested in selling me this car to clarify a few things.

(If you’re just interested in the sales and marketing punchline, scroll past this list.  But I think it’s illustrative.)

1. My family lives in the city and we don’t drive a lot.  Let me say that again, my family lives in the city and we don’t drive a lot.  There are several corollaries to this, like (a) we don’t care that much about gas mileage, (b) we need something we can park in awkward and small places, (c) we don’t care about things that make it easy to get kids in and out of the car multiple times a day, because we don’t get kids in and out of the car multiple times a day.  We barely do it multiple times a week.

2. Our 2-year-old doesn’t watch any TV or other screen time yet.  Because I have no faith in humanity I will add that the new baby who arrives in June will likely not watch TV right away either.

In case those two sets of requirements were confusing, I’ll spell something else out.  We don’t want a minivan.  We’re not anti-minivan but we don’t need one because (see 1 and 2). Also, we live IN THE CITY, so car doors that can automatically slide open are not going to be of any use to us and in fact I don’t want my kids running down a CITY street getting in or out of the car.

3. We don’t need 3rd row seating.  Nobody comes in our car with us.  No we don’t anticipate a lot of carpooling because we live in the city and nobody we know drives.

4. We need heated, leather seats, and 4-wheel or all-wheel drive.  Yes, we know the difference.

5. My husband is tall, most of it in his legs.  A toddler who likes to kick or a fully-grown adult needs to be able to sit behind my husband in the car.

6. Safety ratings are not that important to me.  I am pretty comfortable with anything that says Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Volvo, Audi, Subaru, Volkswagen, or Hyundai without needing to hear about the safety awards you’ve won.

7. I can’t possibly decide whether to pay cash, finance, or lease, until you tell me what the rates are.  I don’t want to tell you what I can afford each month.  I want to negotiate the total price of the car.

8. Cubic cargo space is very helpful for those times when I’m planning to fill the car fully with Rubik’s cubes.  Otherwise, it’s not that useful for me.

For those of you who are not trying to sell me a car, but who read this blog for insights on sales and marketing, here goes.  Our customers are telling us what they want this clearly.  We are just not always listening.

Modern sales is complex.  Customers are more educated than ever, so the strategies for influencing them at the sales level has to change.  Take the car example; when I walk into the dealership, I might already know everything there is to know about the car – the cargo space, the packages, the safety ratings.  But if the dealer wants to sell me something, he or she needs to demonstrate some differentiation, or get me to think about something differently from how I have in the past.

But there is a difference between bulldozing me (“Everyone with kids wants a video screen – you may not think that you do, but wait until your next 7-hour drive,”) and educating me, (“I know you said that safety ratings aren’t important to you, but I’d like to explain which of those are most important to look at.”)  Or “You never know when 3rd row seating will come in handy” vs “I know you said you didn’t want 3rd row seating, but let me explain the relationship between the possibility of seating and total available cargo space.”

I love when my own consumer purchases teach me something about enterprise sales.