Cheers to everyone out there pursuing their passions as businesses, hobbies or side projects. No matter the outcome on paper, you have won the game.

I have embedded my portion of the evening below along with the slides, but all the videos are available on Vimeo. I am not sure when the next Hobby NYC event will be, but I will be there and it will be great.

Here is the talk:

Hobby: Phin Barnes, Sneaker Addiction from Harvest on Vimeo.

and here are the slides:

While working on another side project I will be unveiling shortly, I found Jason Walton through @spencerfry and Carbonmade. A quick search for illustrators lead me to Jason’s portfolio and I reached out to see if he would be interested in helping me with a small side project. I described the project and asked him to send me a couple examples of the work he felt was closest to the style I was describing. In addition to existing work, an early version of the sneakerheadVC logo you see at the top of the page was one of the examples he sent over. I love the logo, but the experience of working with Jason has as much to with my affinity for the image as the quality of the final result.

We talked about First Round Capital and my sneaker addiction coming together in a logo as they had in the name, SneakerheadVC.  Jason suggested using the First Round color palette and adding an FRC to the shoe because the opportunity to work at First Round is what made me a VC. Jason was also inspired to represent the shoe as a simple line drawing because First Round is a seed-stage fund and we often invest in a vision before all the details have been figured out.

If you have graphic needs big or small I would encourage you to check out Jason’s stuff. I would also recommend using Carbonmade to discover artistic talent of all kinds and if you are in the creative services business, throw your portfolio up there. It is killer.

MVPP: one slogan per shirt

When I was at AND 1 my job was to understand the customer and build product that he would love (and buy). In my role at First Round, I get to meet tons of smart people who are doing the same thing. I was making t-shirts, shorts and shoes and they are building technology, but at the end of the day, understanding what the consumer will love (and buy) is the essence of the work.

A popular framework for product development is MVP, minimum viable product as championed by Eric Ries. Iterative development is great because knowing your consumer is hard and it is tempting to cheat by throwing every feature you can think of into the product. At AND 1, when I was not sure what a consumer would love, I would add features to make the product “better.” A buyer at Footlocker taught AND 1 the real cost of this approach and introduced us to what I call MVPP, minimum viable product purchase.

When AND 1 started, there were 5 trash talk slogans and shirts were printed in a Philly basement. The slogans are still great and I try to work them into my game as much as possible

1. Your game’s as ugly as your girl
2. Wear a collar, you just got dogged
3. I’m the bus driver, I take everyone to school
4. You have NO game
5. I saw your game on a milk carton (it’s missing)

Early on, AND 1 got the opportunity to meet with Footlocker for the first time and it felt like a “make or break” moment for the brand. The team spent a ton of time putting together samples to show the buyer and went up to New York with 5 sample shirts. Black, Blue, Red, White and Grey. Each one had the AND 1 logo on the front and all five trash talk slogans on the back. If one slogan is good, 5 must be better, right?

The meeting went really well, but the buyer made a critical product suggestion: Why not put one slogan on each shirt instead of five slogans on one shirt? He thought kids would buy two or three shirts each, and that by recognizing the minimum viable product required to get our customer to buy, we could double or triple our market.

If the shirt was changed, he said he would take 5 of each in each of the five colors. Doing the quick math, that was 125 shirts and made Footlocker AND 1’s largest single customer. Later it became clear that he was ordering in thousands and AND 1 was one step closer to becoming the number one basketball company in the world.

The product suggestion, focus on MVPP, changed the trajectory of the company very early in its life. Now, when I learn about new products and technologies, I always wonder if we could grow the total opportunity by offering less. In the effort to build the best launch product or to discover product/market fit, are we iterating into offering much more than the consumer requires to make a purchase decision? Does our launch offering set expectations for the consumer that will make it harder for the company to grow in the future? Rather than killing features, could we save them for later?

Elegant design achieved through killing features and discovery of product/market fit informed by iterative development are frequently discussed and I would love to get your take on this extension of MVP to MVPP in the comments.

Sneakerhead (VC) Illustration by Sam Flores for LRG

I changed the name of my blog. I want to explain.

I have been collecting shoes since 1985. As a kid I would do jobs in the neighborhood to earn money for kicks. When the Air Max came out I had to have it and once they were dirty, I cut them apart to learn how they worked. My original Jordan 1′s suffered the same fate. I wore those with two pairs of socks so I could fit a 6.5 and get AJ’s, not the sky jordans that the rest of my friends had to wear in the kids size.

As a ball player I was in the sneaker culture and quickly moved from curious to addicted. Understanding the story behind the shoe, the inspiration, was always the best part. It was not enough to know they were hot, I wanted to know why they had been built that way and I love to talk about it.

After collage I worked at AND 1 and while still a collector, also became a creator. We did the mix tape and the ToChillin. We did trash talk tees and ad campaigns with Spree getting his hair done to the National Anthem within days of choking his coach. Our customers tattooed our logo on their bodies.

The designers had reasons for every shape, stitch, material and color we put into a shoe. As the creative director, I learned how to bring the consumer’s eyes into the design studio and work with the artists to create product that would pop. They taught me the language of design and creativity.

We had to choose from thousands of sketches, hundreds of prototypes and build a line of 10-12 styles every 3 months. Each shoe had to create an emotional reaction from the consumer from across the playground court or the food court and continue to delight with discovery through the purchase and use.

At the end of the day, my job was to work with extremely talented people to help them bring their vision to market. In my role at First Round I do the same thing. My years of addiction, of developing a curiosity and deep appreciation for the creative process and for discovering what a consumer really wants are paying off.

If you want to share your creative vision for a technology product or service or if you want to talk kicks, I am in.

We’ve been waiting all year for 2010. So glad it is right around the corner!
Happy Holidays,

SneakerheadVC @phineasb

What's in a name?

I was talking with an entrepreneur today about messaging and his frustration with having a great product that some customers are struggling to understand reminded me of some kicks I built.

When I was the creative director for footwear at AND 1, Ballers were walking around in soccer slides with socks on before and after games, to the mall, to the B-B-Q and to school. Not a good look, not that functional and your socks get ruined. We wanted to create a slip-on shoe that could be worn before and after games and generally enter the casual athletic market. We built the shoe you see here and called it “the slide.”Comfortable, affordable and way better looking than soccer slides with socks.

I took it up to 155th and 8th to test it. Everyone hated it. I took it to West 4th, they hated it. At playgrounds and malls across the country, everyone hated “the slide.” We tested different colors and fabrics and nothing worked. Kids said we should stick to lace-ups or make a soccer slide.

The shoe was a failed experiment until our audience helped us with the messaging.

On my last testing stop before heading back to Asia to finalize the line I was at the Northline Mall in Houston, TX and didn’t notice the kid holding The Slide until the argument started. 30ish high school kids, boys and girls, surrounded the shoes and 29 of them were laughing at the one holding the shoe. He argued with them with no success until he said, “No, stupid. It’s not to hoop-in yo, it’s to-chill-in.” The other kids were silent. Then, one by one, they agreed. In this group “the slide” was the best shoe.

I delayed my trip to Asia by a week and went back to all the other places we tested product, but this time I did not bring “The Slide” I brought the “Tochillin.” It tested off the charts and we included it to the line. Within 12 months we had a $50M Tochillin business with multiple styles and the original Tochillin Low went on to sell over a million pairs in 3 years.

The name of a product or service or how it is positioned through marketing and customer messaging can determine its success or failure. Don’t assume to know your audience, listen to the market to discover the right message. If you have an example of messaging changes that drove significant changes in consumer acceptance I would love to read it in the comments. If you own a pair of ToChillin’s, post it here or on twitter with the #todayskicks tag.

Artful Product

Working with footwear designers taught me a whole new language and comparing my translation of a design with the actual or rumored backstory for a given style or limited colorway is a huge piece of my sneaker addiction. It is fascinating to decode the art and look for messages in the decisions the designer made. The same opportunity exists in street art, t-shirt design, music, poetry and spoken-word. There is always a backstory and the art becomes more meaningful as you discover the message the artist was trying to convey or, in the absense of a message, you discover the inspiration behind the design — what were the visual cues, the feeling the designer was trying to build into the final product.

As a long time fan of Rodger Gastman’s work, his magazine and the cross over between art and product that exists in pop-culture T’s and today’s kicks, it was cool to see these worlds come together to form a  collection at another innovative powerhouse, Threadless. Congratulations to all involved. I will have one of each.

Kanye West, 100K Battle Winner Murdoc, and Ahmad, all return to the World Famous Wake Up Show with Sway & DJ King Tech. Episode 4: Interview and Cypher!

The rest of the interview segments are here.

Anyone at the top of their field should be inspired by Kanye’s willingness to participate and should look for opportunities to reach out to the community that raised them and help others climb toward their goals. The more you give the more you get. Competition is none.