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Yay Path 101 Competition! 5 Ways Yahoo! will mess up Kickstart
I was excited to see that Yahoo! thinks there's an opportunity in the college career space. They're supposedly creating a new social network called Kickstart. From the Path 101 perspective, I say, "Bring it."
Man, I can't wait to see this.
So, when's the last time a big media giant created a really successful social platform from scratch?
[crickets]
It seems like we're not even sure if this is just vaporware, but even if it isn't, I'd say there are at least five things that Yahoo! is inevitably going to trip up on.
- Hell hath no fury like a media company scorned by a social network. They couldn't buy Facebook, so they decided to make their own. But, they needed an angle. What do college students what? A social network about beer? Nope... they're underage. Sex? No, can't do that, not that it wouldn't be successful. Ah! Jobs! Yes, jobs! It seems like Yahoo! is starting out with the idea that what they're building must be a social network, without really considering whether or not the social network approach makes the most sense. This is just bad product development. You don't walk into a problem and say, "Whatever the opportunity is in this space, we're going to solve it with a social network... and a hammer." I actually tend to think that social connecting/friending isn't what students really need... it's content, direction, guidance, tools... Just connecting is like handing students a business card. They don't have any clue what to do with that connection and how to get the most of it, let alone even know who to connect with in the first place.
- Play well with others? Ha! Let's see... 34 million Facebook users. 14 million LinkedIn users. Let's build our own thing and not plug in to the vast networks of existing students and professionals already out there and start completely from scratch because we want to own this category. If you can't bridge the gap to your customers by meeting them in the places they already are, then don't expect them to come to you.
- It's going to be all about jobs and companies. Yahoo! knows how to sell stuff, like jobs and ads. So, they're going to build something that is going to be immediately monetizable, meaning its going to be all about companies, jobs, etc. There are two problems with that. What about companies that aren't on there? What if I don't want to work for some big corporation that can afford to pay Yahoo! to have a presence on Kickstart? Is this going to be a place where art students are going to find jobs? What about drama majors and people looking to work in the non-profit fields? Doctors? What about grad school? Or, most importantly, what if I don't have a clue what I want to be? What then? Am I likely to join a social network based around job recruiting if I'm "undecided"? I highly doubt you'll see any freshmen or sophomores on this site because they haven't chosen a field of interest yet and probably aren't sure where to go. That's the real problem that needs solving... helping them figure out where they want to direct themselves, not connecting kids who already know what company they want to work for (which is how many of them anyway?) Here's the other thing. Because of their HotJobs affiliation, is Yahoo! ever going to tell a student that the best way to get a job is through networking? What they're doing isn't real networking. It's putting a social network around a job posting. There's no way Yahoo! will eat its own lunch and totally disrupt the jobs space. They'll find a way to perpetuate the old business model of charging for posted jobs at a few hundred bucks a pop. In a pure socially networked world, there wouldn't be that kind of opportunity to extract so much value, because the right opportunities would fall into the right laps all the time in a seemless, barrierless way.
- Professionals: Sign up and get spammed by students desperate for jobs. If I'm a professional working at a company, exactly what is my motivation to sign up for a social network based around getting college kids jobs? If I put a profile up and people can contact me, aren't I opening myself up to just getting spammed with resumes? The service has to work for everyone involved and if all these college kids can only find their way to a company by connecting to someone who works there, the last thing I'd want to be is the first Google employee who puts a profile up--especially since the atmosphere here is all about jobs. Professionals love giving advice and helping students away from the recruiting process and such relationships are best built over time. If the whole thing is just focused on jobs, its going to have the feel of one of those really bad "networking mixers".
- Their customer is the company. One of the advantage that startups have over bigger companies is that they can spend a little time purely focused on value to the end user first before figuring out who their customers are. Take Indeed. Indeed could never have gone to job boards day one and said, "We'll crawl all of you, and then you pay us to sponsor your listings and get them to appear in the sidebar results." However, after they proved to be a very compelling consumer service with growing traction, job boards realized the value, especially the smaller ones, and got on board with what they were doing. When you are a big media company, you don't exactly take risks with your clients, but where that leaves you is lacking in the end user value. I mean, would YouTube have become so big if they didn't start out with all sorts of illegal clips? Students want real insider content... and real discussion. Do you think any of these students are going to get into a discussion on the Nike page of whether or not they'd actually like to work for Nike given their history of human rights violations? Have they cleaned up their act? Is this a place I want to work? I wouldn't ask with the recruiter sitting right there in my network, that's for sure.
Look, Alex and I haven't built anything yet and the proof is in the pudding, but seeing these kinds of attempts just gives me that much more confidence that we have the right approach with Path 101 and will succeed. I've been in the classroom with students talking with them not as a corporate focus group, but as a teacher, mentor, recruiter, etc... not asking them, "Hey, if we built this, would you sign up for it" but discussing their real struggles. They don't know where to start and this isn't it. Not only do they not have a network, but they don't know what to do with a network once they have it. They don't know how to e-mail a professional. The services that are out there don't attempt to tackle the hardest but most compelling problem in the career development space... how to get students figuring out for themselves where they belong and pursuing those paths. Just throwing a bunch of jobs and companies at them is window dressing and not going to really help them figure much out. If anything, it just perpetuates the problem that most students think their only options are to become bankers and lawyers or work for big companies, because that's who they see recruiting. Path 101 will get them talking, exploring, using tools, very much the same way TheKnot.com not only helps you find flowers for your wedding, but helps you actually think about what kind of a wedding it is you want to have in the first place. After that, flowers are the easy part.
August 31, 2007 in Path 101, Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Running out the quarter: Bo Jackson in Tecmo Super Bowl
Bo Jackson: Greatest video game athlete ever
August 31, 2007 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-29
August 29, 2007 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Newsflash: Most Facebook users not using their apps. Actual usage relatively poor... thousands, not millions.
Most actual Facebook users knew the deal, but today, Facebook released "activity" numbers for its apps and the results aren't pretty.
Instead of lots of applications showing millions of "users", only one single application has over a million daily users, and that's Top Friends. Most of the applications had around 10% of their userbase that actually interacts with the application in any given day. Knowing that most Facebook users average logging into their Facebook accounts everyday, this isn't really that much usage.
For example, the ultraviral "Zombies" app only has about 3% of its installed base using it on any given day, making its actual usage numbers around 90,000 people, not 3 million.
On the other hand, the "Are you interested?" application has about the same number of active users, but this represents a full third of their userbase!
This is a great way to show statistics on usage and also puts this Facebook phenomenon in a little bit of perspective. Nice move!
Now, all these developers can get to work creating apps that more than 10% of the people that have them want to use in any given day.
August 29, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
ClownCo now called Hulu
From Hulu.com...
"The first bit of news we'd like to share is that we have a name: Hulu.
Why Hulu? Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself. Subjectively, Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we're building. Our hope is that Hulu will embody our (admittedly ambitious) never-ending mission, which is to help you find and enjoy the world's premier content when, where and how you want it."
The name is inherently fun--and fun is the spirit of the service we're trying to build... good old clean corporate-pay-a-naming-consult-$100k-to-come-up-with-a-name-the-MySpace-kids-with-their-Chemical-Romance-and-their -bling-will-like kinda fun.
Personally, I liked ClownCo.
August 29, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-28
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I would rather be a wildlife expert. I would rather be a public relations professional.Huh?
August 28, 2007 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Meet Alex Lines, my co-founder & CTO at Path 101
Looking for a partner is different than looking for just a developer, and it's a difference that was particularly important to me. To build Path 101, I could have just scraped some angel money together, done some consulting, and pulled a spec out of my own personal echo chamber and put something out there. But, that wouldn't have been as good as something that was vetted by someone who had a stake in the outcome--whose interest and ownership in the project inspired a true sounding board, real feedback, and new ideas.
But where to find someone in this market? On one hand, it felt like everyone who had the technical capability to be out there building something was doing just that--and working on really interesting things. On the other hand, this new wave of innovation had been going on long enough that there were probably a few early projects that were impressive but just didn't seem to make it to the next level. I figured there had to be a few talented folks who may be ready for their second Web 2.0 tour of duty.
When I was at Union Square Ventures, we looked at ATTAP, the builders of Riffs, PersonalDNA and Life I/O. I used to joke and call it the "techie commune". It was a bunch of really impressive, cutting edge tech folks working on some very ambitious personal information management and recommendation products--all located in half of WebCal founder Bruce Spector's apartment. The first time I met Alex Lines, he was a lead developer there and he showed us how he had hacked together a mobile geolocation system based on cellphone tower data. It enabled a cellphone to know where it was in the city long before phones had GPS built into them. He had hacked an exposed mobile API and did some tower wardriving throughout the city.
ATTAP alumni was one of the first groups I went looking for to find potential partners. Even though the company might not have reached the success they were looking for, I was always impressed by the people they had and their ability to flat out build really elegant stuff.
I met him again earlier this summer at a nextNY event--after he had left ATTAP and I was anticipating leaving Oddcast. I didn't know I would be working on Path 101, so our ships passed a second time in the night. But, after scoping out some team pages, asking around, and cross referencing a nextNY softball RSVP by "a. lines", I zeroed on on Alex, who, as it turned out, had already read the original Path 101 post on my blog with some interest.
So we met up and realized that we saw eye to eye on the project from the start. What was important to me was that we had the same approach to partnership--mutual respect for experience and each other's opinions, open communication, and a goal-oriented approach. This was not a guy I was going to get bogged down in personal issues with, nor someone who thought he knew everything or thought I did either. I also liked his approach to technology--focusing on functionality and relevance to the user--above loyalty to "web 2.0 trends". Alex met with a former colleague of mine and the feedback really summed it up nicely:
"...he is a technologist, and not predisposed to any programming language or framework. Find the best technology to solve the problem. Big plus. "
His technical capabilities extend to perl, ruby, php, c, c++, sql, korn, bourne, javascript, html, Oracle, Sybase, MySQL, FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux, OpenBSD, Mac OS X, and, as we learned last Friday, softball bats.
He's also a bit of a Renaissance Man. At Vanderbilt, he was a Physics and English double major.
Plus, he's also a Brooklynite (Park Slope), so how could I go wrong?
I'm excited to be working with Alex and we're currently busy laying out our vision of Path 101, meeting with potential angels, and other stakeholders like career offices and professional societies.
We're also looking for a great front-end designer/developer to join our team, so if you know anyone, please do send them our way. This train is leaving the station!
August 28, 2007 in Path 101, Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Wallstripped: The $15,000 Quote
Don't blink...I'm live on this morning's Wallstrip!
August 28, 2007 in It's My Life | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Where Orson Wells gets his booze...
August 26, 2007 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-25
August 25, 2007 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Angels or VCs? Or both?
I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to fundraise according to the SEC, so let's just play hypotheticals for the moment... wink wink, nudge nudge.
IF I was a startup looking to raise seed money for development of a project, ooh.... something similar to Path 101 (I think I've settled on having a space there), and raising somewhere between 250-450k, what should the makeup of that round look like?
On one side, not many VCs would even do such a round pre-product, but a few of the would. There are
some smaller, perhaps more specialized funds that do this sort of thing. Either way, these are people that are primarily in the business of investing in startups. To me, the benefit is that they have experience, connections, and they (ideally) have a sense of professionalism around the way they conduct their business. (i.e. They're not going to show up at your door one night demanding their money back.)
The one thing I don't necessarily believe is that it makes them any more likely to invest in an A round. Sure, they've gotten a chance to get to know you, but if a VC is interested, they don't need to put in 200K to do that. They can take you out to a few lunches and hang around the rim enough to see what you're up to. Plus, if you don't wind up coming out with a compelling product, they're free to just walk away from the deal anyway. At least with angels, there isn't an expectation that they're going to participate significantly in an A round, so you won't have egg on your face if it doesn't happen.
As for angels, you're likely to need them at this point, so I think the question becomes more of a question of composition. Friends? Family? Big names? Angel groups? A mix? How many?
If you can, I think its advisable to avoid friends and family, unless you have friends and family in the business that you're going into, whether its tech or something else. You'll need their moral and emotional support and you should let them know that's what's important. You don't want money, or lack of it when the company blows up, getting in the way there. Plus, unsophisticated investors, even if it's your mom, are probably going to be a little bit of a pain in the butt. (Although, Jeff Bezos' parents turned out to be good angels...)
I think a mix should probably be in order.... the professional investors that you know best, and also a few "reach" candidates. If you could get anyone on board--captains of industry, celebrities, etc--who would it be? For me, I think anyone on the founding teams of Monster, Careerbuilder, or Hotjobs would be perfect. Published authors of books like "What Color is Your Parachute?" would be ideal, too.
But I'd like to hear from entrepreneurs. What's been your angel experience? Surprises? Who's been a much better addition than you expected? Who's been a disappointment? VCs in angel/seed rounds?
August 25, 2007 in Path 101, Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
nextNY Softball today - All geeks with gloves welcome
We might not score 30 runs, but at least we'll get in a few pitching position players.
Come on up to Central Park's Hecksher Field #2, right by Columbus Circle at 6:15 today (Friday, August 24th). We'll try and get the first pitch off at 6:30, but if we have some 1.0 guys, they might need a little more time to stretch. :)
Feel free to pull friends and folks from your companies... we have extra spots.
August 24, 2007 in Baseball and Other Sports, nextNY, Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Never cooked with the toaster oven before...
...just warmed stuff up.
Just threw some pork chops with salt, pepper, oregano and olive oil in. I cut the fat off, but left it to drip on top. Looks like its working so far.
August 22, 2007 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-22
August 22, 2007 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
New Commenting System
No more captchas... wooo.
Disqus is a perfect example of an opportunity to do exploit something small to a bigger player, like commenting, do it cross-platform, and create a lot more value to users than any one platform could do on their own.
Now if there was some way to combine it with MyBlogLog, that would be something... a suite of social tools around surfing and commenting with a single identify and tracking of participation. A geek can dream...
Thanks Daniel and Jason!
August 21, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Leave the panini, take the meeting...
Yesterday, my brain ceased to function for about 3 minutes. It was scary stuff.
I was supposed to meet with a VC about Path101 (or is it Path 101? Space or no space?) and they e-mailed me saying their flight was two hours late. So, I figured that was the end of the meeting and replied that we could talk on the phone in the next few days. I was at the Web 2.0 Meetup at Slate and I was starving. So, I ordered myself a chicken panini with gouda.
Fifteen minutes later, the VC calls while in a cab coming over from a meeting in Jersey City and asks if I'm available to meet for dinner. He had dinner scheduled originally with someone else, but he was going to bail on it to meet with me.
Here's where the 3 minutes begins.
I told him that I had ordered a little while ago and suggested maybe we could meet up after our respective dinners.
When I got back to my conversion with Kristian, he said to me, "So a VC that you really want to work with offers to cancel his dinner to meet with you, and you pass because of a nine dollar panini?"
"Oh... wait... . jeez... That was really stupid wasn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Dammit... I gotta go call him back... what was I thinking?"
I'll tell you what I was thinking... I didn't want to waste food. Years of my mom scooping extra servings on my plate so that she didn't have to throw anything out just hardwired themselves into my brain, cementing a pattern that would be highly sub-optimal in this situation.
So I paid and bailed on the panini... told the waitress to enjoy it... and left for dinner after calling him back to let him know I was totally free to meet up if it was still on the table. Thank God it was.
"Yeah... I could have had a $500 million exit... if it wasn't for that $9 ($12 with tax and tip) panini."
August 21, 2007 in Path 101, Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Looking for a CTO/VP of Engineering for Path101
When I was eight, we got a computer. An IBM PS/2 with an 8086 processor and a 20MB hard drive. That was 1987—twenty years ago. My only experience with coding, however, was the C-logo class I took in school that year. Man, could I make that turtle rock and roll… I was the C-logo master. But, I never followed up on it at home, because our home computer wasn’t for hacking. It was for my dad’s business. Quite a few times, I got lectured for not reading the MS-DOS manual first before just playing around on it. That was pretty much the end of my coding career, which means that, today, now that I want to build Path101, I need someone’s help.
I can always go outsourced--to some team of Uzbekistanians (Uzbeks?), but I want to do more than just get something up. I want to be able to break out of the echo chamber and work with a true partner—not someone who may be gone from this project in three months. There’s no substitute for a real live human in the same room as you who has his or her own dry erase marker at the whiteboard. Even virtual teams will tell you that the most productive sessions are the ones they have in person.
So, in the spirit of uber anti-stealth, I’ll put my conceptual thinking for the build and the structure, as well as what I’m looking for in a partner relationship, in the hopes that there’s someone out there who not only sees the value, but has the same philsophy on how to create this.
First of all, whoever takes this project on has to be a data jockey. The real value of a Web 2.0 app is the leverage it can get out of its data—the data it pulls in, the data it pushes out and the mashup of data in the middle. Every piece of data that comes in or out of this thing needs to get used 8 different ways if we’re really going to knock socks off.
Example: Imagine a student is using a resume building tool. You shouldn’t have to create a resume for paper and a resume for LinkedIn and a resume for Facebook. Using standards like hResume, they should be able to use the resume wizard once, then populate a LinkedIn profile with the same structured information that we popped out a fancy PDF version to send out by e-mail. But let’s go a step further... Let’s say that a student participated in a special summer program related to their major at a local college—a two week immersion course on financial modeling, for example. The enter it in the resume wizard. However, our structure means that we know the dates, we know the location, and we can ask what this thing was—a course? A scholarship program? An internship? We should allow the student to be able to publish that information to other students with similar interests. That’s how I found out about the mentoring program at my local financial professional society. Someone a year ahead of me went through it the previous summer and suggested I participate. The information about that course was on her resume, but for it to get into my head, she had to bump into me randomly in the cafeteria—a lucky break for me. Efficient use of data structures and matching would have put that program and the 8 other summer programs just like it in front of me when I was thinking about my summer.
You might ask why would students allow that to happen? Aren’t they competing with me for the same jobs? Not if they’re a year ahead of me in a different recruiting class. Plus, perhaps they understand (or we can teach them) the value that sharing a summer program with me this year means that I might send a job opportunity their way at my company next year.
Just as an aside, one thing that also seperates Path101 as a business from what’s out there is our philosophy of giving as much value back to the students as possible. Think about that aggregated dataset—all those college resumes with all those positions. Monster has them. They know where almost every college student interned last summer. That’s about as close to the total universe of available opportunities as you can get, but do they expose it to students? No. They show those resumes to recruiters who pay for the access to the students and they show you the jobs that people pay to list, leaving the larger universe of opportunities to rot. That’s their business. All those random little companies that you’ve never heard of that provided some really interesting internship opportunities—ones that never get posted at $250 a pop because the company can’t afford it—are being wasted by Monster and not shown to students in order to protect their own bottom line. Millions of students worked their butt off to research and network their way to internships they couldn’t find on Monster, especially in the non-business areas. Monster sits on that useful data, leaving next year’s students on their own to recreate that whole research process all over again. No wonder it’s so hard to find a great internship. That’s not the way Path101 is going to create value for students.
In addition to trying to get the maximum value creating leverage for every piece of data, whoever works on this build needs to believe in portabilty of the application. Its not just about Facebook either, which obviously a student needs to be able to access all of our services on. One day, before they buy us, Monster may want our whole application to appear on the Monster site, or the NYTimes, or the PR Society of America. Schools may want this to appear on their sites and we can’t afford extensive enterprise integrations with every school. Integration needs to be a matter of skinning, cutting and pasting iFrames and code, and incredibly robust APIs—caveman style easy…but I’ve been beating that horse to a pulp lately.
Also of major importance to me, and maybe this is most important, is the platform this is being build on. No, its not Java or LAMP or Ruby on Rails—it’s TRUST and RESPECT. I need to be able to trust and respect the insights of someone who has built a scalable application before and that person needs to trust me that I’ve actually been in the classroom with college students, mentored them, and talked to them about their career aspirations. But it goes deeper than that, right? It goes far beyond the 1’s and the 0’s. I had a VC ask me what I would do if Facebook offered me $10 million for this site in a year once its up in 25 schools and growing. As a co-founder, perhaps that nets me $2-3 million after tax—not too shabby for a year’s work. You know what, though? That doesn’t really change my life much. Plus, I honestly don’t consider myself a serial entrepreneur. This is my idea. Will I have another one? Maybe. Maybe not, and if I don’t, $2 million basically gets me a nice apartment in the city. I’m not really about to trade in my big idea for a nicer apartment—that’s not enough for me. What I really want to do is to be able to tour the country talking to college students because I’m the guy who started the service they use day in and day out to pursue their passions. I want to hear about the paths they uncovered and the people they met. I want to get a letter from some successful entrepreneur ten years from now who tells me that they didn’t even know what entrepreneurship was until they logged on to Path101 and started exploring. That’s what value is to me. If I was just in this for as quick money, I would have spent the first two years of my career burning myself out as an investment banker.
So, in a since, what I’m building… well… This is going to be BIG. At least I want it to be anyway…and perhaps one day we’ll capture the even larger opportunity of career changers, moms returning to work, people laid off at 50… even goals that aren’t necessarily about career stuff.
Whoever joins will be a signficant equity partner, be able to get his hands dirty in the build and also manage a tech team. I’ll be honest—there’s been some strong angel/VC interest in this (over and above folks you might guess on your own) and so it seems likely the team will be able to be focused and fulltime for six to nine months.
So that’s me and that’s a little bit about what Path101 is looking for. Maybe you’re sitting in a big media company twiddling your thumbs itching to get back in the startup game. Maybe you just had a successful exit or a big blowup and you’re looking for the next thing. Maybe you’re at an early Web 2.0 startup and the writing’s on the wall that it isn’t going to wind up inside Google anytime soon. Let’s talk.
August 21, 2007 in Path 101, Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (4) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-21
August 21, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
We are talking about Bay Ridge, right Jason?
Jason Calcanis "grew up in the famously gritty Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, where violence was as ubiquitous as graffiti", according to Fast Company.
Bay Ridge?
This Bay Ridge?
So, um... I guess if the violence is as ubiquitous as the graffiti, then there's... um.... no violence.
We do have tornadoes, though.
August 20, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (5) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Subway Thumbing
The guy who just walked into the car has personal space issues...as in...he's in mine. Push off a little, buddy. Plenty of room in this car. Ah, nice. Today's the first day of normal express trains in Brooklyn. If Chris Angel, Mindfreak, was Mexican, he'd be the guy behind me. N train arriving. Time to switch. I'm not really into sitting on the train in. I'll be sitting all day. I don't need to be sedentary for another 45 minutes. We havent left the station yet. The train is silent. No a/c, no motor noises. No announcements. Just the deep voice of the conductor, not over the PA system, but outside the doors on the platform talking to a customor. Its the last two weeks in August and the trains are showing it. Pretty empty. I could still sit if I wanted to. I need to break today up into bite sized chunks, so I can be really efficient. I have a Facebook app to finish the spec for (consulting project) and I need to finish up the syllabus for my class, which starts two weeks from Thursday actually. I need to move to another car...or I'll be soaked by the time I get to work. Perhaps that's why this car is so empty. I wonder if it is every car. Yup. Every car. Dammit. What are Windorphins? I guess this is effective advertising, because now I'm curious and I want to go to their site. Ok, I felt a little bead of sweat roll down my back. Its hot in here. Its official. There's now a guy lying down asleep on the floor of the car at the end. I dont think he was there when I walked in. No one around him seems the least bit troubled by it. Some guy went over to him and nudged him. He's awake. This little girl sitting by me has an old school baby doll with a plastic head. Someone has played tic tac toe on the baby's head in blue ball point pen, several times. Man its hot in here. When I commutted to high school, you could open up window vents on the B trains. This baby has a thumb sucking feature and eyes that roll back. The kid has just discovered a hole in the back of the baby's pink onesie, which she conveys to her mom in spanish. Ah...there is a window vent. I didnt notice that before. I just went over to open it. Funny enough, it requires two people to open it because of where the latches are. This guy next to it was all to happy to oblidge, as if he'd been scoping aid for the last few minutes himself. Finally,the car just got noticeably cooler. Did I do that with the window? If we elected a mayor of this car, I'm sure I'd win. Me and my Passenger of Action campaign would handily defeat the dude who kicked the sleeper.
August 20, 2007 in It's My Life | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-20
August 20, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Asking for my e-mail address so I can use the Going.com Facebook app? No no no no no!! (pounds pillow)
Are you serious?
Yes, I'm beating this point to death, I know.
THE WHOLE POINT OF GETTING THE APP ON FACEBOOK IS SO I DON'T NEED OR WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH GOING.COM!!!
If you can't figure out how to get me to use your service without having my e-mail address... or at least convincing me that giving you my data is useful by providing value first, don't expect to see me using your Facebook service anytime soon. Uninstalled. (Do not want!!)
August 19, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Social graph problem? Nope. Me neither.
What's the bigger problem?
Not all having all the professional contacts you know on LinkedIn or LinkedIn not providing enough utility?
Not having all you friends on Facebook or Facebook apps in general being pretty lame?
Do you wish all 150 of your Facebook friends or 800 of your MySpace friends used Twitter? I don't.
How much time in a day to you spend actively managing, syncing, adding to your online friend networks? Not much? Yeah, me either. I spent more time trying to get two calendars to sync to my phone... porting the contacts themselves around has been pretty painless.
What I'm getting at is that Brad Fitzpatrick's call for innovation around the social graph is a solution for something that isn't really a problem.
I have disconnected, partially overlapping social networks both online and off. Some of my friends use Twitter, some don't. Most of them are on Facebook, but some aren't... and a lot of people I connect with professionally are at least on LinkedIn, regardless of whether or not they actually use it.
Here's the thing... I can't really think of any application whose main barrier to being incredibly useful is the lack of connectedness of my social networks or people on the web. Typical barriers include people's issues with privacy, or the ease of use of the app, etc. Would I like to be able to see where my friends are actually eating via their credit card data? Sure... but that's not a social connectivity issue... its a business issue/risk for the credit card issuer and a privacy issue for my friends. Solve both of those problems in a really compelling way and that problem will definitely go away.
And frankly, the gaps in connection serve purposes. I like the fact that there's some barrier to discovery and usage for services like Twitter. It allows communities to develop norms of behavior--atmospheres. Frankly, it bothers me that all of these people are just barging right into Facebook--my Facebook world--and expecting me to connect with them.
100% seemless connection to everyone... and the ability to see how everyone is connected to everyone else... that's a wall I'm not sure should come down. I like the fact that the barrier to finding me means that you have to be aware of the blog world or nextNY or be on LinkedIn or whatever... its a nice filter. On top of that, its the gaps and hurdles that allow me to be successful--it gives my network an advantage because not everyone is tapped into the same people that I am.
And, no, I don't particularly care that Facebook is a walled garden... because it's open enough. They built enough of the right hooks in such a way that was far beyond what anyone else had put out there. Would a completely "open" world be better? I dunno... what would it give me that Facebook isn't giving me now? Am I worried that they'll steal all my data? What data? I'm not banking through it, or paying my taxes. And frankly, my friends are my friends regardless if Facebook knows about them or maintains that data or not. I'm not worried about losing them.
I guess I just don't see what the big glitch is. Social is not the bottleneck. It's utility. Build something easy and useful that plugs into what's out there and people will use it... and if the masses demand that it work with some other app, it will happen. The world is too competitive for it not to.
August 19, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Finished first in the Harrison Street Regatta
...which, according to our screwy rules (2nd person back wins), means I lost. I was going to slow down and try to push Tim into the dock, but then I realized I'd have to make next year's trophy. So, after two consecutive 3rd place finishes, I was happy to take bragging rights instead of the title.
August 19, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Tweety's Revenge
I tawt I put a cap in da puddy tat's dome.. I did I did put a cap in da puddy tat's dome.
August 19, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Wallstripped!
I just totally randomly bumped into Lindsay from Wallstrip outside the Met. (I was looking to see if there was wifi in the park, because I have a softball game on the Upper East Side later.) She asked me about Blue Nile and so we talked wedding rings. :)
August 17, 2007 | Comments (5) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Christopher Walken cooks chicken and pears
August 17, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-17
August 17, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Mere's birthday is over
...and yes, number candles are disproportionate to cupcake. When you're not as smart, you go for cute.
August 17, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Fuck Facebook Conversion: Be platform agnostic and use your own APIs.
Sorry for the foul language, but I don't think the message I tried to convey in my other post about building Facebook apps really came through strong enough.
I just heard an entrepreneur tell me that his problem with Facebook is that it would give him zero conversion to his main site.
So what?
The whole idea that you have a "main site" is dead. Stick a fork in it.
And while you're at it, stick a fork in the widgets, too--at least the way we're been creating them. Right now, most of the widgets that are out there are an attempt to squeeze the elements of a service into a neat little sidebar rectangle--a bottleneck created by one-way APIs, limited space, and underwhelming goals.
What you need is a site that is completely agnostic as to where it lives--at your branded dot com address, in Facebook, on the iPhone, or as a "powered by" section of the biggest media site you could possibly ever think of partnering with.
And you shouldn't have to spend 50 man-months customizing your site to fit in all these random places, reworking the architecture to get your square pegs in your business partner's round holes. (That sounded dirty, didn't it? So this is a PG-13 post. So what?)
True "BizDev 2.0" only comes when you start eating your own dog food--when you develop your site's infrastructure so that you actually use all of your own APIs and portable modules to construct your site. So, if you're a video sharing site, you have the upload widget that could be embedded anywhere and the API calls to display videos, links, ratings, plays, etc. in as many sort orders as you can imagine. It should be a matter of cutting and pasting, with perhaps an additional PHP page generation scripts as the glue, to completely recreate your service in another place on another platform. The iphone.yourstartup.com should do all of the same things as yourstartup.com and the Yourstartup Facebook app, not to mention the version of yourstartup that is going to appear as a channel in AOL's site. And they should all have self-contained revenue models... Facebook ad networks in Facebook, appropriate banners for the iPhone, and whatever networks net you the most cash on the dot com.
And you shouldn't need to "convert" any user of one place to a user of another place. Sure there are issues of universal sign-ins, unique identifiers, etc... but your account management system should be smart enough to handle registered users, partially registered users, unique Facebook IDs, phone numbers off the WAP site and allow you to tie as much or as little of them together and expose that user's history and unique data to them across all the instances of their site.
So, at the end of the day, you shouldn't care where the user winds up... everyone can access your content or your service in a form native to the platform that its on, but will the full functionality of whatever you're up to.
Until that happens, we're going to have dinky widgets and namby pamby Facebook apps.
August 16, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (5) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Parking on Tornado Alley: There used to be a tree here
August 16, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-16
August 16, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-15
August 15, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
nextNY Softball - Friday, August 24th - 6:15PM!
Can you handle a glove as well as you can handle code?
What's more lightweight? Your Web 2.0 app or your bat?
Show up at Central Park (RSVP here, please) and play softball with the folks from nextNY.
Details:
What: nextNY Exhibition Softball (6-12ft soft toss, co-ed)
Two teams of 15.
10 in the field, 15 in the lineup subbing in defensively each inning.
When: Friday, August 24, 2007 @ 6:15PM (First pitch: 6:30PM)
Where: Hecksher Field #2, Central Park (by W63rd, use this to locate: http://urltea.com/16l5
August 14, 2007 in Baseball and Other Sports | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
I have two Product Management/Strategy jobs in NYC
I've recently been asked to seek out two people for two really interesting jobs.
One is a very interesting position with a company developing mobile apps that already has a solid base of users... they're looking for someone to be a thought leader for developing and detailing new ideas for what kind of applications they should be developing. I call it a Mashup Manager, because you'll need to be able to read a lot of APIs and figure out what interesting data sources you can tie into, how to work with what the carriers give you, etc. A couple of years experience in a product related position (not necessarily mobile) and a good perspective on the youth market would be helpful.
The other job is an interactive strategy position for a company in the cable space... helping dumb pipes get smart, create value for customers using new technology. The great thing about this position is what whatever you implement/recommend could find its way into millions of homes! Let's call this position Cable 2.0.
If you want to send over a resume and various links to your digital spaces, send them to my gmail account. charlie (dot) odonnell (at) gmail (dot) com
August 14, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
2000 Readers... W00t! Take my reader survey and I'll give you an oatmeal cookie
Ok, so I'm lying about the oatmeal cookie. However, oatmeal cookies are good, aren't they? I think I like them more now than I ever have.
You know what else has grown on me? Icky Thump by the White Stripes.
Still, 2000 readers, that's a lot. Who are all you people?
Ok, here's my reader survey.... RSS readers, please click through and contribute 3 minutes of your time in the name of data mining. Thank you!
August 14, 2007 in The Blogosphere | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Path 101 Feedback
Thanks to all of the folks who have given early feedback on Path101.
Here's what people are saying so far:
First off, no one has bashed the name yet. Personally, I don't like it at all, but I'll admit, it's not awful. It seems like that's what a name has to be these days: not awful and at a dot com. Then, you can focus on having the product create the brand image, not the nomenclature.
The response most often given was, "Why limit this to just college students?" People pointed out the huge opportunity for career changers, moms reentering the workforce, and adults later in life. I absolutely agree that such a platform has more legs than just in the college market. I just think it's good to start somewhere and the college market certainly isn't a small one by far. Plus, that's the market I know. I don't know what it's like to get laid off at 50 or reenter the workforce after having kids, but certainly that's an opportunity for growth.
Others said that I was building something for students just like me, and that most students didnt know what they wanted to do even when they graduated. Because I agree with the second point is exactly why the first isn't true at all. Particularly because most students don't know where to start and haven't done much career prep is exactly why this platform is valuable. Just because they're not doing the work now doesn't mean they don't want to get into an exciting career. Most students don't realize that they can take their passions and make a greate career out of them. Take my friend Christina. She must send out a party evite every week and most of them aren't even for her-she's the consummate organizer and she's been stuck working with kids in a job she's not a big fan of for the past three years. Finally, she came to me the other day and told me she was switching careers and becoming an event planner. DUH! In college, she probably never realized how huge the conference and event planning sector was. That's the opportunity...to take her pre-existing interest in organizing people socially and give her an opportunity to connect with the people, content, groups and events necessarily to fuel and focus that interest. If you do it socially, you don't even need to be particullarly introspective. Your friends will tell you something on the order of, "You're so great at party planning...you should do THAT for a living."
The big knock on students in their first two years of college is that they're not thinking about this stuff. That's not true at all--they're thinking about it all the time and scared stiff by it. Their parents and families keep them thinking about it, and they definitely think about it when it comes down to deciding what you're going to do with your summer. Most students would love to pursue interest over the summer, but they just don't know where to start. It's not like there are a lot of job ads out there for "freshmen with no experience."
The other piece of feedback I got, before I added the biz model page to the deck, was on how college students won't pay for this, and that's right, they won't. That's why we're going after the deepest pockets in the ecosphere on this one... the recruiters, companies, advertisers, etc. We will not charge colleges or students to use the service, unless of course that a college wants to advertise themselves... like for grad or continuing education programs.
Keep it rolling it... I'm off to setup our (my) Basecamp account.
August 13, 2007 in Path 101 | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-13
August 13, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Six months ago today...
I just got this note from Mere...
6 months ago today that you sent this email... to my spam folder, of course, but I got it within a few days. I remember it well; I was sitting in the library, prepping for our afternoon negotiation class, and definitely smiled in amusement at the total randomness of it. :)
-----Original Message-----
From: Charlie O'Donnell [mailto:codonnell@oddcast.com]
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 8:37 AM
Subject: [POSSIBLE SPAM] Shrimatch.com
Hi Meredith,
Shri tells me that you're planning on coming to New York and that I should look you up. She's proven to be a wise resource when to comes to career matters for me...this is her first attempt to diversify into the social vertical. I have to admit, I'm a bit curious to see if her expertise carries over. :)
I don't know how much she has told you about me, but basically, I'm a born and bred New Yorker that has wound up in a product manager role by way of finance and venture capital. I also teach an undergrad class on how techology is changing business.
Drop me a line anytime... Hopefully, we can make schedules mesh when you're here.
Charlie
August 12, 2007 in It's My Life | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Colorful Day at the Boathouse Today
I had a really great day at Pier 40 today... volunteered from 9 until 3:30. There were just all sorts of little things going on that I as able to snap timely pics of, which made for an interesting photoset.
The dock has become a breeding ground for little minnows (we think, we're not sure). There are thousands of these suckers in the water.
Rock, paper, scissors to figure out who goes on the last remaining single and who has to wait.
Kevin bringing me a sandwich from the free food being given out at the end of the pier by the high school kids' photography club.
These have seen better days.
August 12, 2007 in Kayaking | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-08-11
-
Oh hai! This iz purfect. k thx bye.
August 11, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Robert Sexton of Star Positions is a Spammer and I'm filing a complaint with the LA Better Business Bureau
I just received an unsolicited e-mail from Robert Sexton of Star Positions.
I've posted the text of the e-mail below.
Basically, Mr. Sexton and his company are offering search engine optimization. Of course, the problem is that he's offering his services unsolicited by spamming e-mail addresses, bulletin boards, and forums, and what's worse, threatening anyone who attempts to out him.
Want proof? Google ""star position" "robert sexton" spam". You'll get this link which contains a really interesting thread.
"You know,
I also received this email from a Robert Saxton""Robert Sexton and his Star Position company are notorious spammmers. He tries to play high and mighty but a few of our company email alias are bombed with UCE from him on a regular basis."
"This outfit sends from comprimised open-relays such as the current one 66.174.76.167
I was once getting over 10 spams from this guy everyday until firewalling the blocking all the sending IP's"
Other people have gotten similar spam from Star Positions, like this woman.
Apparently, Mr. Sexton doesn't know about the CAN SPAM Act, which has the following requirement:
It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address.
Yeah, um, Bob, I don't see a valid physical postal address with this e-mail.
I wonder what the penalty for that is.
"Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000."
Hmm... that's going to cost them a pretty penny.
Now about that valid posital address?
Google says it is:
Just in case anyone wanted to know. :)
The law that Mr. Sexton IS however familiar with is the one he uses to threaten people who try to out him. Using Google's index cache, I found a site that is no longer up that posted an e-mail from our spammy friend:
Seems that Star Position employees make these kinds of "errors" all the time. Good thing there is absolutely no reason why this company would have any reason to fear their safety if I posted the same phone number that they not only e-mail out to thousands of people, but is also available on Google.One of my people emailed you in error. You've seen fit to put her phone number on it. In case it has not dawned on you, you are actually by doing this in violation of certain Penal Codes for the State of California -> look up 'cyberterrorism' 'cyberstalking' specifically California Penal Code 646.9 'actions which would be designed to put an individual in fear for their safety'
I'm going to look at your site again in 24 hours. You are going to be a good chap and remove any phone numbers from any postings relating to my company, Star Position. And before you blow this off, or do something truly even more stupid than what you have done, I suggest you do a google search for California Penal Code 646.9 and related topics. We are based in California.
Best Regards,
Robert Sexton
Director of Business Development, Star Position US and Star Position UK
That number again? 949.215.0022
I did find a really useful posting to a thread related to Star Positions:
But what about the actual service? Is this a legit business just using illegitimate marketing techniques?"This loser SPAMs everyone. Forward his crap to spam@uce.gov (the FTC). If enough people do it, they'll finally investigate his a**"
From the same forum above...
So the full text of that note?"Star Position does not deliver.
I know because I paid for their service almost a year ago.
I received at most, 200 visitors.
Many of the visitors were from outside of the US,
Many of the visitors were the same person repeatedy.
(I know because I dropped cookies on them)"
Check it out below, while I go file a complaint with the LA Better Business Bureau.
"Without being seen
first on the major search engines, your website can be little
more than a glorified business card." "If your site is seen
first on the search engines, chances are you're the one people will tend to contact. It's
that simple." What do a Realtor, a major bank, an
attorney, and a natural health clinic have in common? They are
among the over 13,000 companies who have discovered a better way to
be seen first on YAHOO, MSN, GOOGLE and thirteen other
search engines. A way in which their sites are always seen first, 100% of
the time, across the major search engines, even above the sponsored
links, but WITHOUT having to pay the sometimes exorbitant charges
associated with the 'pay per click' sponsored links. This is possible due to search
toolbar technology, with over 26 million downloads, which are predominantly US-based. This
allows us to place you first 100% of the time across the major search
engines,
exclusively, across our whole Network! For everyone who has the
toolbar installed on their PCs, you are about to
see what they see on the major search engines! This is the placement we do
for Chase Bank. What you see above
even
the names of the search engines is
Chase Bank's actual website! The search term 'BANKING' always points to
their site on the Network, across
the top sixteen search engines,
including GOOGLE, YAHOO and
MSN!
This is the placement we do for a Los Angeles Realtor, Kathryn Bishop.
What you see above even the names of the search engines is her actual
website! The search terms 'LOS ANGELES REAL ESTATE' and several others
always points to her site on the Network, across the top sixteen search
engines, including GOOGLE, YAHOO and MSN!
And lastly, this is the placement we do for Stone Canyon Mortgage, What you
see above the names of the search engines is Stone Canyon's actual website!
Stone Canyon has the generic search term 'MORTGAGE' pointing to their
website on our Network, across the top sixteen search engines, including
GOOGLE, YAHOO and MSN! What we've done for Stone Canyon on a nationwide
level, we can do for other mortgage companies on a more localized level.
You too can have this guaranteed type of exposure. Our normal run on the
Network goes for one year, but for those who register with us, by the end
of this week , you will only pay for the first six months. As for the cost, you'll
probably spend more over the next year for your morning coffee than you
would spend for this.
We do make specific guarantees,
including a money back guarantee. Call for details.
I can be reached at my office, from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific time.
Please feel free to call me if you have any questions.
Best regards,