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My recent tracks on Last.fm
The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:
May 30, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-30
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This bodes well for Disqus... the more you comment on your own site, the more engaging and popular it can be.
May 30, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Treasure Your Baggage
I've had two conversations with people in the last 24 hours who told me that they were trying to get over exes. The process has captured their focus and is preventing them from seriously considering getting to know new people.
I think the idea of getting over someone is terrible and that we need to stop putting so much pressure on people to "move on". Let's be realistic. Unless the person you loved changes or you change, you're always going to love or at least be a little in love with them--and that's not a bad thing. I just think most people aren't confident enough to be ok with the fact that the person they're with still has feelings for someone else.
But why wouldn't you? That's totally natural. If you were with someone for a long time, loving that person is always going to be part of who you are, and to be honest, if someone meets you and says, "Hey, I can't deal with you until you totally forget that person," then they're in a sense trying to deny part of what makes you who you are. Hell, there's a part of me that still loves my high school girlfriend from like a dozen years ago--but it's not really active love. It's just the kind of nostalgic fond memory of a time long since passed--a love for the innocence of the time. The reality is that I haven't spoken to her in years and I have no idea what she's like now... but as far as that person that I knew in that moment in time, that feeling will certainly never go away. It's part of who I am--I'm just not losing any sleep over it.
Of course, it's different if you're still actively trying to win back someone or get back together--but once you realize that's not happening, I'd be completely ok getting to know someone who has recently got out of a relationship. Ending relationships cause a lot of introspection and self evaluation. "Who am I?" "What was I doing?" "What do I really want?" These are all questions that the end of a relationship brings that I want whoever I'm dating to be asking themselves in a pretty serious way.
If anything, actually, I'd rather be with someone who recently proved the capacity and willingness to love someone and commit to them versus someone who's last attempt at vulnerability is a long distant memory.
What I'm saying is, don't be embarrassed over emotions in turmoil, or feel like it makes you some kind of relationship leper. You are who you are at any given time, and if a new person doesn't accept that, just forget them. We ALL have baggage. Baggage helps us travel. We take it with us to prepare ourselves for our trips, to hold on to valuable keepsakes that meant something to us. You'd be crazy not to take baggage with you on a trip. You shouldn't let it way you down, though, but don't pretend you don't have or need it either.
I may pack light, but I have baggage, too. Some of it is old and some of it is new, but I have no interest in anyone who can't deal with its existence.
May 30, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Manhattanhenge 2008
"Manhattanhenge (sometimes referred to as Manhattan Solstice) is a semi-annual occurrence in which the setting sun aligns with the east-west streets of Manhattan's main street grid. The term is derived from Stonehenge, at which the sun aligns with the stones on the solstices. It was coined in 2002 by Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History. It applies to those streets that follow the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 which laid out a grid offset 28.9 degrees from true east-west."
May 30, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Best. Gift. Ever.
My friend Ashley is a painter.
I helped her out recently and she transformed one of my favorite photos into a painting to thank me. The photo is of kayaks stacked up in Riverside Park after the Downtown Boathouse Harrison Street Regatta.
Check out how cool this is...
.
May 30, 2008 in Kayaking | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-29
May 29, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
My recent tracks on Last.fm
Here's what I've just been listening to on last.fm
Create automatic posts like this one using fubnub.com
May 28, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Hey Alex, I think there's a bug in our code
ew ew ew ew ew ew ew
May 28, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Cities based on ideas are made of straw... and why Paul Graham is wrong about New York City
Paul Graham recently wrote a piece about cities. He puts forth Cambridge as a city of ideas, New York as a city that is all about money (where people doing startups are second class citizens) and the Valley as a place for startups.
I’m not about to start comparing the Valley to New York City. That’s just silly, because the Valley has a multi-generational head start on creating tech startup companies. However, given that, it does make me wonder why Cambridge and the Boston Area is so far behind the Valley, because Route 128 has been a tech center since the late 1950’s. I mean, “Harvard and MIT are practically adjacent by West Coast standards, and they're surrounded by about 20 other colleges and universities,” as Paul puts it. Perhaps he should be explaining why his City of Ideas gets less than a third of the venture capital investment that the Valley does.
I think the fact that Cambridge is a city of ideas is exactly why you could say it’s questionable how great a place it is to do a startup. In an environment dominated by academia—where you lack time pressure, a sense of immediacy—you’ve probably got just as much of a chance of creating an interesting intellectual exercise in burning cash as you do building anything that resembles a real company. I mean, have you ever tried collaborating with an academic institution if you’re a business? Your startup would run out of cash before they figured out the right academic chair to lead the effort and which pool of research money to allocate for you. It’s no accident that startups need to be spun out of these institutions to be successful. Plus, seen any hugely successful companies come out of university incubators lately? (And no, Zuckerberg’s dorm room does not qualify as an incubator.)
Also, think about it another way. What are the last 10 or 20 really novel "ideas" in the startup world? Things that required a leap of thought... We can debate it and certainly I'm up for creating a list, but when I think of good ideas, I think of del.icio.us, Skype, Wikipedia, Twitter, Bug Labs, Slingbox, Google (b/c of the biz model)... Hardly seems like Cambridge has a lock on the idea generation market in the startup world.
Ideas today are a commodity. Anyone can have an idea, so being the Capital of Ideas is pretty much equivelent to building your city of out of straw. If I were a co-founder of 3PigsTech.com, I’d think about building somewhere whose choice of building material was more formidable.
Which brings me back to New York City. By saying that “New York tells you, above all: you should make more money,” Paul Graham is basically admitting that he’s never been north of Central Park, on the Lower East Side, or out into the Boroughs. I grew up as a finance major in NYC and I made the same mistake that Paul makes. It wasn’t until I finished school and got about three years into my career that I soon realized that there was a lot more going on in NYC than just Wall Street.
When I think of ideas, I think of creativity, not just scholarly research and publication in academic journals. An idea has no value unless it’s either a) new or b) executed. If execution is a business phenomenon, I can’t imagine a better place to execute than NYC (or the Valley, if you’re a tech startup), but in terms of new ideas being generated from creative people, I wouldn’t exactly hold the ivory towers of Ivy League schools up against the creative culture of NYC. New York City is a mecca for design, fashion, dance, art, film, theater, international relations—it’s not difficult to imagine that this stew of creativity rubs off on other industries.
Hedge funds, for example, are a great example of creativity leaking into another industry. The most forward thinking, creative investors break out of old institutions to play markets in out of the box ways at hedge funds.
We even solve creative engineering problems here. Peter Semmehack from Bug Labs, an open source hardware company pushing the limits of creativity in the consumer electronics space, has always said that he has found the best and most creative engineering talent here in NYC. Need to explore a completely unfamiliar environment millions of miles away? That was the challenge for the Mars Rover, and it’s no accident that much of it was built here, by HoneyBee Robotics.
Paul also makes the point that someone creating a startup in NYC would feel like a second class citizen. I have to be honest—I’ve felt that way several times, but mostly from people outside NYC. Within the city, I’ve actually felt really supported. Most of my 21 angel investors are not only in NYC, but they’re either NYC natives or have lived most of their lives here. Among my large diverse group of friends (I grew up here, went to school here, never lived anywhere else, and know tons of people doing very different professions), I’ve received fantastic support. No one ever asks me why I don’t just go into investment banking or trading.
In fact, most of my friends aren’t even in finance at all. Some of my closest friends are a magazine publisher, a lawyer, and a producer for televised mixed martial arts. I play on a softball team with two PR folks, a clinical psychologist, a chocolate retailer, two IT guys, another lawyer, a teacher, a media buyer, and oh yeah, one guy in finance. Most of the volunteers at the kayaking program I participate in don’t even have regular 9–5 jobs. The other day, I was out on the dock with a guy that resells guitars and plays in a band, a former non-profit exec, a public health researcher, and another IT guy. And these people don’t all live in big luxury apartment buildings in midtown. They live with roommates in Astoria, in studios on the Lower East Side… just scraping by but still loving every minute of it. And we haven’t even mentioned all the actors and actresses. Surely they’re not in it for the money, right?
So, the idea that NYC is just all about the money is just ridiculous…. just as ridiculous as this:
“One sign of a city's potential as a technology center is the number of restaurants that still require jackets for men. According to Zagat's there are none in San Francisco, LA, Boston, or Seattle, 4 in DC, 6 in Chicago, 8 in London, 13 in New York, and 20 in Paris.”
How about we make the list “number of restaurants that don’t require jackets for men”? I have a feeling NYC would lead that list, seeing as the total number of restaurants in NYC minus 13 is probably more than SF and Boston combined. Is this really how Paul thinks his YCombinator startups should make decisions on where to build their business? By restaurants with jacket requirements?
But rather than argue about whose city is better, which is similar to the arugument about what language to code in, go with what you know. Generalizations will get you nowhere. It would have made no sense for me to build Path 101 anywhere else but NYC, because my network is here. I found a great technical co-founder, two amazing developers whose experience could not be any more well-suited to their tasks, and a slew of supportive angels. That doesn’t mean all this stuff comes in a box if you move your startup here, but if you can say the same thing about your neck of the woods, be it Louisville, Miami, the Valley or Cambridge, stay put, keep your head down, and build like the dickens. Your city is what you make of it and how you build your network, not what the pundits tell you it is.
May 28, 2008 in nextNY, Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
DateMEme
Last week, when I posted my "Top 10 Reasons to Date an Entrepreneur" I got a response from someone who was actually interested in going on a date.
It's funny, because that wasn't the intended purpose of the post--it came out of a conversation I was having with someone about entrepreneurs and what working on a startup does to your personal life. Then I realized, that in my 4+ years of blogging, that was the ONLY time I've ever been approached that way. 2,246 posts and, before that, not a single person has stepped forward and said, "Hey, you seem like the kinda guy I'd want to go out with."
Now, I suppose for half of that time, I've been seeing someone, but I don't think that's always been apparent. Still, what about the other half?? Perhaps there's the fear of the spotlight--as if I blog all my dates here, which I obviously don't.
The one thing I think I can say is that, while there's a lot of content here on this blog, it really does only present just a side of me. I think a lot of blogs are like that--where the professional person comes off in such a way that might be different from the person you'd get to know if you knew them personally. So, I thought it would be interesting to start a meme encouraging other bloggers to share a little something about who they are and what they want when it comes to their dating/relationship life.
So here are the rules:
Write 5 things about either a) what you value in a counterpart or b) what someone needs to know about your dating/relationship personality.
Then, link to 5 people of the OPPOSITE SEX that you want to see answer these questions (to ensure that it doesn't just look like a bunch of dudes trying to get a date.) If you're already in a relationship, you can still answer of course. This is more about getting to know a different side of you, or just getting to know you better.
Ok, here's mine:
- Despite my strongly held opinions and outspoken nature, I'm actually quite openminded and really desire that in someone else. I like new ideas and perspectives, and it is exactly this desire for feedback, pushback, etc. that helps me form such strong opinions--because I do feel like I do what I can to be surrounded by tire-kickers.
- I'm much more of a 1 on 1 person than I am about big groups. I'd rather get to know one person pretty deeply than meet 30 people and just get names and what they do for a living.
- I want to meet someone who is passionate about something--anything. It doesn't have to be their career (although if you're going to spend 8-12 hours a day at something, that might as well be it), but I just can't relate to people who can't get really really psyched about at least one thing in their lives.
- I need someone with a calendar--someone who understands how to stick to some kind of schedule. That's really different than someone who needs a routine. Being spontaneous is fantastic, but I also can't deal with last minute cancelations or leaving things too up in the air. I don't see my friends enough. I don't see my family enough. So, if you can't tell me whether or not you're free Saturday afternoon at least a few days in advance, don't expect me to cut out possible family time to leave it open for whenever you figure out where the wind will take you that day.
- I take care of myself and find it difficult to date anyone who doesn't respect their own body. I don't think I could date a smoker, and while you don't have to be a gym rat, getting some kind of exercise at least a couple of times a week shows that you care about yourself and your body--that you think enough of it to keep it up. I do, however, love desert, so ice cream is a big exception to this--Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia... rrrrrggggg.
Ok, I'll tag Shri (even though she's married) , Rachel, Tik, Tara, and Whitney (although you can learn a lot about her here). Funny, there were a couple of other women that I wanted to tag, but I knew they'd never repost this, because their blogs are solely professional. I think that's very telling, because a lot of women don't even want to open that door at all and let all the crazies in. :)
May 27, 2008 in It's My Life | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
My recent tracks on Last.fm
Let's just do some quick testing of header and footer things with these templates.
Wow it actually works!
Create automatic posts like this one using fubnub.com
May 26, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Are we done with Hilary yet?
Hillary Clinton's colossal blunder simply the last straw
We have seen an X-ray of a very dark soul. One consumed by raw ambition to where the possible assassination of an opponent is something to ponder in a strategic way.
May 24, 2008 in Politics | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-23
May 23, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Making New Friends and Sharing
There are also the people who aren't necessarily your best friends, but who you just seem to spend a lot of time with: Co-workers, teammates, people you volunteer with. Again, it's all about the randomness of just being there.
Blogging and the web bring with it an interesting dimension, because the life that only a select few used to be privy to is now, more and more, being consumed by all--indiscriminately. You can't really treat any of your blog readers as special because they're all getting the same content. Sure, maybe you could direct message a Twitter friend, but building a really strong friendship 140 characters at a time isn't ideal either.
I recently shared something pretty sensitive with a slightly more professional friend that I don't get to see all the time and at first she was kind of taken aback. She didn't know what to do, because people don't usually just come out and share the information that I showed her. The fact of the matter was that it was one of the few important pieces of content I have that the rest of you don't get to see. Contrived, perhaps, but I showed her because I wanted to say, "Hey, listen, you're the kind of person I want to have in my life and life's just not naturally bringing us together in a friendship the way I want it to." That happens a lot and sometimes you just have to nudge things a little.
Building up relationships and trust is easier than you think because of online tools, but building that small set of just a handful of people you can really reach out to and depend on is almost harder because of online tools. How do you demarcate the special folks when everyone else in the world gets to see most of what they do anyway? It's like creating a VIP section in a theater that only goes 5 rows deep and is completely in the round.
So, at least for a moment, I found a way and formed a new bond based on exclusivity... so just keep in mind that as much as you all think you know about what goes on in the other side of the blog, someone got to see something different that I don't think I want to share here. My world isn't totally flat... yet.
May 23, 2008 in It's My Life | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-22
May 22, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Who's the Dick on my blog?
Lawsuits: Sxip mauling investors in Vancouver's Silicon Forest
Sxip Identity, a Vancouver-based startup that's built a tool for porting your Web identity across sites, may have hustled investors out of $370,000 by misrepresenting acquisition efforts by tech titans Google and Yahoo. Founder, CEO and president Dick Hardt (no joke) now says the company is insolvent, and has no plans to honor the convertible bridge notes which were to revert to cash or equity upon sale or additional investment in the company. Where did the money go?At an identity conference a few years ago, Sxip handed out advertising fliers with the slogan, "Who's the Dick on my blog?"Well, Sxip Identity apparently owes Sxip Networks, also founded by Hardt, $4.7 million — and owes Hardt $275,000. The angel investors have filed suit, alleging that Hardt never disclosed the existence of the other company, and that the arrangement puts Hardt in a position to recoup money from the company before other investors do.
Well, I guess now we know.
May 22, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
How many bloggers, twitters, vloggers, etc. feel this way?
Thought Industry: It's 3:00 am And I Can't Sleep
Look, between you, me and Google, I would love nothing more than to unlock the doors to allow you a chance to learn how I really feel.
About emerging media.
About my coworkers.
My family.
My friends.
Myself.
The fact of the matter is I can be a coward. It's the same cowardice people discover when tasked with answering a survey question with a response that satisfies what they think people want to hear verses what they truly believe.
May 21, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
A Fordham Phenomenon Signs Off
On January 29, 2007, a Fordham junior decided to start a blog. It wasn't a career blog, like the ones I teach my classes about. It was about college life--the gossip and campus micro-celebrity, micro-infamay, controversy... The whole campus was reading, and so were many of the recent alumni.
The administration was reading, too... probably not happily either. Oh, it was never really anything that bad--but it was up for all to see. The internet provided a window into the world campus administrators always knew existed, but never really got to read about in public on a daily basis.
The popularity of the blog was unprecendented. There wasn't a student on campus who didn't know about it. It became part of the weekend routine to e-mail the blog with the latest tales of collegiate debauchery. It's popularity even spread to young alumni... and I'll admit, at least one faculty member.
Sixteen months and 423 posts later, a captivated campus--a community, rather, read FUrez Hilton's final post. He graduated and decided to say goodbye.
I'll repost some of that message below, because it was really touching, but what I really want to bring up is the question of what a blog like this means for communication between students and administration.
I talked to a school administrator the other day about Facebook. She said she had never been on it because she was concerned about potentially viewing illegal activities . What would she do if she saw photos of students drinking?
So, acknowledging that students probably do post photos of themselves drinking, rather than accept the reality of college life--which no doubt she participated in when she was in school--or engage in conversation with the students about it in an open way, she chose not to engage at all. She chose not participate in a medium of communication used by 95% of the students on the campus, because she might see some photos of kids drinking.
This is why students don't visit counseling centers, they don't meet with their class deans, and they don't show up at the career office--because at the end of the day, most administrators go home to a life outside of campus and would rather pretend that the student's life on campus--in all its gory reality, didn't exist.
Well, thanks to FUrez Hilton, it couldn't be escaped. I applaud the author for being authentic and true to themselves the entire time, no matter what anyone thought.
What I hope is that future Fordham voices that are magnified by social media, no matter how controversal, are engaged. If I were some of the administrators spoken about on this blog, I'd start my own blog. I'd give the student body some insight into the difficulties of my position, because, frankly, it's not an easy task. Students at every college are going to feel like it's a case of "us vs. them". That's only going to get worse when you only hear the voice of "us" and never from "them".
Let this whole FUrez era be a lesson in communication--that one student was singlehandedly able to captivate a campus of thousands, to help build a sense of community--all with a dinky little Blogspot blog. I hope that school administrations all over think hard about how they talk with (not to, or at) their students, and what they can learn from what they're hearing. Why do the students complain? What are they upset about? What makes them happy? If I were an administrator, I'd look at this blog like the best thing that could ever happen to my relationship with my students--because it would have given me the chance to understand, to participate. I doubt it will be looked at that way, and that a collective sigh of relief will be breathed, and an opportunity will be missed.
And now, FUrez's last post... Best of luck!
"This is the hardest thing I will ever have to do in my life. Scratch that, adopting an asian baby with Eric Stafstrom will be the hardest thing, and that's because there are damaging pictures of him on Facebook. This website started as a joke and a way for me to vent my frustrations with the silliness of this Univeristy. (hint: I havent gone to bed since parent appreciation dinner and there may be mispellings. i will correct them later. get off my nuts.)To my babies in the underclasses: please behave next year, but not too much. Make sure you carry my legacy on and question authority. Please don't be afraid to be yourselves. My biggest regret at Fordham is that I didn't come out earlier. I know this isn't the case for everyone, because not EVERYONE is a homo, but it's an example of waiting too long to enjoy yourslef. The past two years have been teh most liberating of my life, because I finally realized that A) everyone knew I was a homo, and B) I was finally comfortable in my own skin. Dont let the small mindedness of Fordham's silly administration or ignorant classmates stop you from doing whatever is in your hearts. If you want to go to a bar in the city, GO. If you want to tell the girl of your dreams that she is the most beautiful girl on the face of the earth, GO. If you want to make out with a guy with a bad reputation, FUCKING GO. You have four years before you are held accountable for your actions. All I ask is that you take advantage of it. Please. Make FUrez proud.Also, when you see lost freshmen next year, take them under your wings and show them the way. When I was a wee freshman, i was walking aimlessly in the bronx with a group of fifty (as you all do as freshmen) and a group of upper classmen shouted to us from their apt to come upstairs and they told us where to go and where to have fun. This resonated with me all four years of college. Look out for each other. God knows the administration isn't. Casino night? Come on.To my seniors graduating with me: It's been a fucking honor attending this university with you for the past four years. Every single one of you has taught me something. Even the ones who hate me and think I am the cockiest piece of shit in the world. It's true. I am a cocky piece of shit, but it's you who have kept me grounded through my rise to the top. I can't believe I just wrote "rise to the top". Like i said, I am a god damn mess right now. To the people I didn't get a chance to meet: I wish you the best. To the people who were there for me through all of my ridiculous bullshit: THANK YOU. I have faith that the class of 2008 will do great things. Actually, I don't need faith, because I know that you are all fucking superstars. Every single one of you. Even if it's figuring out how to steal bottles of alcohol from drinking establishments; that alone has demonstrated your commitment to a good life and your inginuity. You are all fucking fabulous. JEsus christ it's 7:24 at the moment and I'm writing this.To most of the administration and faculty: Thank you. The jesuits have kept it real all four years and shown dedication to their ministry and calling in life. You are all superstars as well. To the members of the administration who feel the need to compensate for their own issues throughout their lives via their positions of power: take a good look at your job descriptions and rethink what you're doing in your offices. Know that you are here for US. You are only employed because students attend this university. Try and work with us. I know the sections of administration that are viewed unfavorably by the Fordham community (this includes faculty) are those that cater directly to students. You wer eall up Dean Grey's ass at the JASPA Convention and were all consequently promoted to offices of high power. Use your power for GOOD. The students are totally willing to compromise, but you need to be too. You have a great amount of egg on your faces from numerous debacles this year. Included: SPRING WEEKEND, the counseling and health services here, and your general attitudes towards the people who pay your salaries. This University is not the one from Animal House. You don't need to act like Dean Vernon Warner. These kids just want to graduate and get an education and have fun doing it. Don't rain on their parade.Addressing the issue of succession of this blog: I honestly feel that it was a great moment in time, and that it shoudl end here. I know my cunty fans will try and replicate it. I encourage that. Send me your efforts. If I feel someone is following the same path I did, I will post the link here. However, I'm a bitch and my ego is huge, and the odds of me thinking your humorous writings are worthy of the entire Fordham community (alumni included) are slim. Understand that I'm not ruling it out.I'm crying kind of because this is it. Please know that I love you all, and I will always be watching. Thank you for the words of encouragement and teh death threats. They all mean a lot ot me. The encouragement more than the death threats, yes, but I love you all. I approved a comment thanking me a few posts back saying they felt like they were included in a big inside joke, and that made my day, because all I've ever wanted is for everyone to feel like they are apart of the Fordham community. I have been listening to depressing friendship music all day and night and realized that Fordham University was the best decision I have ever made. Every memory I have from this place will be cherished, and I will never forget any of them. To any of you students who know how to party and go out on the nights when the Ram Van stops at 12: I have a swell apartment and you all have an open invitation to stay WHENEVER. I'm serious. My facebook sends all messages to my phone, so just let me know, and you can crash on my couch.
In the words of Eva Peron: My greatest fear in life is to be forgotten. Don't forget me. I will never forget you. I love and respect every single one of you.
xoxoxo,
FUREZ"
May 20, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Top 10 Reasons to Date an Entrepreneur
1) Our hours are really flexible. We can meet up anytime between 11PM and 8AM. Sleep can always be rescheduled.
2) We will never come home and complain about our boss.
3) We'll pay for all our dates the old fashioned way. (Old fashioned=Circa 1999...with worthless stock options)
4) You can tell all your friends that you're dating a CEO who runs their own company. You can leave out the fact that the CEO is also the secretary, the janitor, middle management, and a web design intern.
5) Some of us have millions of dollars in the bank. Of course, it belongs to our investors, but still...it's in the bank.
6) You get to be a beta tester of the next Google or Facebook.
7) We're good at teamwork. We have to be...not all of us can code.
8) We're not afraid of commitment. In fact, let's move in together... you know, economies of scale and all.
9) Your place is closer to my office and has more bandwidth. Do you mind if I just leave this server here? Really? Is it loud? I never really noticed.
10) Your parents will just love us... They're accredited investors, right?
Bonus: Passion: We haz it.
May 19, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Tiered Twitter
Dan Farber suggests that Twitter should just charge a subscription fee as a business model.
"Much of what gets sent via Twitter is a form of self-advertising. If you like Twitter so much, how about paying $5 a month for the privilege."
I think Dan's got it partially right. Clearly there are people who use Twitter as self advertising. The presidential campaigns, Gary Vee, Jason Calacanis... with thousands of followers, many of whom are also influentials themselves with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of blog and social network eyeballs as a group, are clearly getting a lot more tangible value out of Twitter than someone who uses it to share with 6 friends. I think it's important to have both sets of users.
The casual users with small networks of friends potentially contribute much more to Twitter, in aggregate, then they get back--so charging them the same fee that Jason Calacanis has to be doesn't make a lot of sense, and would put up an artificially high barrier to growth. These users contribute a lot of good data--zietgiest data, brand information, or simply good local content that others might be able to leverage off of to create value themselves. They're not pitching a candidate, product or book, so why charge them?
I think there should be tiered pricing. What do you think Gary Vee would pay for Twitter if, like Dan suggests, it came with some SLA's and rebates for outages...or rather, what is Twitter worth to Gary? Given his recent book sales, I'd say that he wouldn't blink at $50/month--or at least he shouldn't. Neither should Jason, or Obama, CNN, or Zappos. If you have 5000 followers, that's about a $10/CPM to your message across. Given the number of Tweets to phones, the engagement level of the users, I'd say that's pretty cheap, actually. Then we could scale it all the way down to like 300 followers or something at a few bucks a month.
May 18, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Meaningless E-mail from Vikram Pandit
I just got this because I'm a Citibank cardholder:
Dear Charles Odonnell,
I want you to be among the first to know about the bold steps we are taking at Citi to be the premier, global, fully integrated financial services firm.
Our objective is to create for our customers an experience in which services are seamless, payments and transfers effortless, and distances meaningless. My commitment - and the commitment of everyone at Citi- is to work tirelessly around the world and around the clock to deliver outstanding value and service as we continue to earn your trust and that of every customer we serve.
We are proud of our enduring strength as a global financial institution, striving to successfully meet the needs of clients like you in more than 100 countries. As always, we look forward to continuing to serve you - wherever you are and wherever you need to be.
Sincerely,
Vikram Pandit
CEO, Citi
So, um, yeah... thanks Vik. That was really... um... bold of you.
May 16, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
How soon should you make yourself irrelevant?
One piece of advice that sticks with me is to try and hire so that you make yourself irrelevant--the goal being to build a well oiled machine that runs smoothly without you. This as opposed to one that comes to a grinding halt without you involved in every last decision.
One of the early mistakes I made so far was not to be aggressive enough about hiring early on. That put us behind where we wanted to be because it just takes a long time to find great hires--finding the right skills set, personality, timing. It's just a lot of variables.
So, recently, I met a completely amazing person who has the ability to take the business and operations of Path 101 to the next level once we launch in a month. Of course it's earlier than I ever thought I'd think about hiring a business person, but the more I think of it, the better I think it makes our product.
There are a lot of product challenges we will have moving forward: striking a balance between providing objective career information vs. possibly making candidates available for recruiting, incentivizing people to present honest portrayals of themselves in their content and data, not necessarily wht they think will just get themselves hired first... challenges that demand focus, creativity, lots of observation with respect to the product.. These are things that tend to get bumped when rasisng money, working out legal negotiations with partners, recruiting, working up financial and marketing plans... so it stands to reason that a product focused CEO would want to find a great businessperson as soon as possible, right?
I think that a lot of CEO founders have a hesitation around this and they possibly stay as CEO way too long--to the detriment of the business. I'm the opposite. I know exactly what I'm best at--getting out into the flow of conversation, being "outside guy", being creative and reaching out for business development, making connections, evangelizing. Our business prospect thinks it's too early to join... but I'm more concerned with waiting until it's too late.
May 15, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-14
May 14, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-13
May 13, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
If you don't build for geeks, don't expect them to just show up
There's a nice piece in the Times about Yelp and how it has achieved nice growth and a small critical mass by focusing on the fanatics.
They quoted Jeremy Stoppelman:
“We put the community first, the consumer second and businesses third.”
That's paying off for them and it does make you wonder whether or not you can continue to be that way to attract the mainstream audience.
I was thinking about this the other day now that I have an Eee PC. I'm liking it so far, but the keyboard is definitely maddeningly small. Still, I'm getting better at it. Anyway, one thing I'd really like on it is the ability to read feeds offline. I currently use Newsgator products to read feeds--both Feeddemon and Newsgator Mobile. I love the syncing capability.
But unfortunately, Newsgator doesn't have a Linux product. It does, however have an API into their syncing infrastructure. However, without a Linux product in the first place, most of the people I know that are using Newsgator are corporate types. Newsgator Go!, their mobile product, is for Blackberry and Win Mobile.
With no Linux client and no iPhone app, what are the chances that the developer community is going to care enough about their product in the first place to develop on top of their syncing api. Developers tend to build things to solve problems for themselves. Not surprisingly, NO ONE has built a Linux RSS desktop client on top of their API. Even a Thunderbird plugin would be nice, b/c Thunderbird can handle RSS feeds and it works in Linux. So far, nada, zilch.
Salesforce has the same problem. Salesforce has no Thunderbird plugin because they say it's not a big enough chunk of their potential audience to make a business case for. Perhaps, but think about the particular audience they're missing. If you're not trying to reach out to the group of people who have rid themselves of Outlook in favor of an open source e-mail client, you're really missing out on a potentially passionate, creative, and innovative userbase. If you're a platform company like Salesforce, you need those folks to stay on the cutting edge.
So when you're building, the geeks might never get you to profitability or critical mass, but don't underestimate their importance in your community, especially if you're trying to get people to develop on top of and around you.
May 13, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Data Politics
When I was a freshman in college, I went to my school's club fair. I like the idea of helping change this country for the better, so I checked out the school's political clubs--the young democrats and the young republicans. I had visceral reactions to both because it seemed like they were more into politics than they were into progress.
That's how I feel about Hilary Clinton. She ran a good fight, but she can't win--she doesn't lead in the popular vote, the delegate count, the superdelegate count, or in campaign funding--yet her interest in furthering her political career has gone beyond what's good for the party and what's good for the country.
"Politics for the sake of politics" is kind of what I feel like when I read Chris Messina's post about Data Portability. Chris is a good guy and working really hard for what he believes in, but complaining about which technologies are featured on the Data Portability front page... *shivers*... Makes me totally not want to get involved at all. It's like arguing whether Dave Winer invented RSS. As far as I can tell, some combination of Nick Bradbury and Dick Costolo invented RSS, because Feedburner and Feed Demon are the most useful tools I had related to it.
And I can imagine what those Data Portability meetings are like, too. Arguing over which standard to adopt, figuring out a way for Google and Facebook not to "own" it all... You know what, just lock up my data somewhere safe and try not to lose it. We're talking about data portability, but meanwhile it seems like every other week someone loses my data in a cardboard box full of server tapes. Monster, Visa... Who's in charge of protecting my data over in these places? Courtney Love?
Speaking of music...
Nothin' to do and no where to go-o-oh I wanna be se-DATA-ed.
Most of this open data stuff has been a helluva lot of political and PR posturing, like on who's joining or not joining Data Portability. One thing I can guarantee is that everyone who joins that workgroup is self-interested and won't agree to anything that doesn't lose them money or positioning. It feels no better than ClownCo... oh... wait... Hulu, that's right. Damn, I liked the original name better.
Face it. No one cares about the user but the user. And you know what? The user doesn't even care about data portability either. These are people that pay almost a hundred bucks for mobile plans and phones that are years behind the rest of the world. They pay almost a hundred bucks for crappy television. They pay another fifty bucks for broadband more fitting of a third world country. You think they care about syncing up their Facebook friends with their LinkedIn contacts? Most of 'em, believe it or not, don't even know what LinkedIn is. You know what they think when they visit the "jail" that is Facebook?
"Oh, look, Mary's single again... I gotta try to hit that."
"Oh, look how drunk Tommy was... what a funny picture."
"Oh, look, someone threw an electric hamburger at me."
So while you're out there trying to publish and share open standards, Facebook is building a tool that follows many of Scott Heif's 50 Reasons... It's fun, because people will think they're a loser if they're not on it, because it gets them sex and/or love, etc.
When Microsoft builds something useful that solves a problem for me, I'll use it. I don't care if it locks me in. Plaxo used to be spammy and now they build a useful tool, so I'm using it. Altruism and politics aside, if it's useful, they will come... and they will come not because it's open or decentralized or because Google doesn't own it.
And while I'm at it, all the open financial publishing standards in the world aren't going to prevent the next big accounting scandal either.
May 13, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
echovar » Blog Archive » A Venezuelan Moment: The Gillmor Gang considers nationalizing Twitter
The idea of building competitors to Twitter on the same platform, or redistributing Twitter to multiple players reminds me of the idea that New York City should be rebuilt in Ohio because it would be cheaper. Or perhaps we could distribute a little of New York City in every state of the Union. New York City is what it is because of the people who live and visit there. Building another New York City in Las Vegas doesn’t result in the phenomenon that is New York City. In a very important sense, Twitter is decentralized at its core, it is rhizomatic rather than arborescent.echovar » Blog Archive » A Venezuelan Moment: The Gillmor Gang considers nationalizing Twitter
May 13, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-12
May 12, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Building the Team: A nextNY Community Conversation about Startup Hiring
Go in alone or with a partner? How do you find and recruit a partner?
Need a business person? A developer? Where? Who?
How do you know if they're the right person? What do you ask on an interview?
And what do you pay all these people??
I've covered some of these issues in the posts below, but if you'd like to discuss startup hiring issues with a great group of up and coming entrepreneurs, you should definitely come to nextNY's Building the Team Community Conversation.
We'll be discussing, with the help of some great conversation
leaders (entrepreneurs, a recruiter, a VC), the ins and outs of startup
hiring.
Please join us!
May 12, 2008 in nextNY, Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-07
May 7, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
"We have no idea" and "Let's hope for the best": Two things you don't want to hear from Plaxo customer service when you are a paying, premium customer
I pay for Plaxo. My premium service gets me Windows Mobile sync, which has been great, supposedly gets me LinkedIn sync, which currently doesn't work, and what I found out today is absolutely inadequate customer service by phone.
I was just trying to look up the e-mail of someone I recently connected to in LinkedIn. It should be in my address book, because I sync LinkedIn to Thunderbird through Plaxo.
Not so much.
Hmm... I went into Plaxo and there's not even a trace of that LinkedIn sync in my account. It's not an available feature. The only place the Plaxo site even has it is on their marketing pages for premium accounts. So I call up customer service and the best thing they can tell me is "Our engineers are working on it." I asked them how long I'd gone without this feature. They had no idea. That conerns me, because this is one of those things where I'm suspicious that it's more than broken--it may be that Plaxo is being blocked by LinkedIn for business reasons. Either way, it would be nice to be told when a feature I'm paying to use and that I do actively use goes down.
I told her I wanted a timetable of when this was expected to be fixed. She had no idea... but she said that someone would get back to me. I said, "Great, I expect someone to get back to me with a timetable within 24 hours, because this is a feature I'm paying my hard earned money for."
She said, "Let's hope for the best."
Seriously?
"Hope for the best?"
Where's Stacy from Plaxo when you need her? Do they have anyone else trolling the blogs?
May 7, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Nomination Fail
May 7, 2008 in Politics | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
10 Things You're Not Allowed to Say in the Echo Chamber
- I think Twitter is pretty reliable. It breaks less than a lot of the other things in our lives, like cellphones, cars, bikes, fax machines, copiers, etc. Jarvis agrees that all this burning Twitter at the stake stuff is over the top.
- Facebook is not a LinkedIn killer. Facebook is where my actual friends live. I do not want to see pictures of your kids just because you read my blog.
- I use Typepad. It works fine for me. I don't need plugins or installs or upgrades.
- I still don't understand how OpenID makes my life that much easier and I don't have an OpenID that I actually use. I pretty much use the same password setup for everything, except my bank account, and "Remember this password" whenever I can.
- Most startups, by number, don't make it. This does not mean there's a bubble. This is the way it has always and will always work.
- VC's are not evil. They're not the cause of bubbles either. If a business model is stupid, don't blame the person who thought they could fund it and do something with it. Give some of the blame the person to wrote it and ran it into the ground.
- I unsubscribed from TechCrunch because 99.9% of the companies profiled on their are not in my industry. Of course it doesn't hurt that Arrington's ego is the next bubble waiting to pop.
- I do not have an iPhone, nor will I ever buy one. I need real keys and don't feel the need to carress my phone to navigate the web. Get a body pillow, people.
- Kara Swisher is a journalist. The rest of us bloggers are pretty much hacks.
- Ruby on Rails is not the answer to everything. A great developer is.
- Bonus: 3/4 of founding CEO's should not be the CEO after the first 18 months of the life of the company. Unfortunately most of them have too much pride to step aside and focus on whatever it is they do best.
May 7, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
I missed this... Pots, Kettles, and Web 2.0 vs. the Economy
In her recent "Web 2.0 economy hangs in limbo" post, Caroline McCarthy gives her professional assessment of the frothy atmosphere of startup sponsored parties...
"...young women left and right were posing for photos with snappily-dressed Mashable overlord Pete Cashmore..."
That's Caroline on the right posing with Mr. Cashmore, for the record. Should have been "Young women like me..." Hell, why wouldn't you pose with the guy? Dude's a handsome fellow.
The article goes on to paint a picture of Web 2.0 companies being in trouble because of the economy, lack of business models, high burn rates. Sure, every company has to watch their wallets because of the economy, but lightweight companies built on Web 2.0 technologies are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the economic downturn.
For example, consider how much money the average company would save by switching to a free conference call provider--a provider using the latest technologies whose overhead is so low that they can afford to just make money off of giving the core product away for free and upselling for extra features.
Plus, people think that ridiculous schwag and wasted sponsorship dollars is limited to startups. I'm sorry, but has anyone been to a non-tech industry conference lately? How many people have sponsored bags, pens, squeezey stress shapes from companies already making millions in revenues and far past their venture capital burning days.
Perhaps my friend Caroline needs to spend more time at Ruby, PHP, MySQL, etc. users meetup, where developers are building great gamechanging applications instead of going to all the big flashy sponsored parties before making a generalization on the economic prospects of Web 2.0. Not all of us are handing out light sabres.
May 7, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
When is New York City going to become bike friendly?
The other night, I went to the movies with a friend. The Kips Bay movie theater on 2nd Avenue has no bike racks, not that there are that many around the city, so I figured I'd keep the bike at his apartment. Unfortunately, his building has a rule that bikes are not allowed to be brought upstairs. The only place you're allowed to store a bike is in the building's storage area at an extra cost. Therefore, anyone trying to save money by biking to work pretty much loses that savings in bike storage costs--even if you can fit your bike in your apartment.
That's not the first time I've encountered this. Just yesterday, I went to go bring my bike up the elevator of our office and was turned away by the people at the front desk. Instead, I had to go around to the fright elevator. Unfortunately, the freight elevator is only open at certain times. I often work late. Good thing the night guard doesn't seem to mind when I exit the building with the bike through the front, because I don't have an alternative.
Even New York Sports Club fails in being bike-friendly. Once I asked the club manager on 35th and Madison if I could pull my bike into their lobby over by the side, because there wasn't even a parking pole outside the building to chain it to. He said "no", because this was one of their high end locations and they didn't want a bunch of bikes tarnishing the visual appeal of the gym. God forbid this should look like a place where people who participate in athletic, environmentally friendly activities work out.
While I'm complaining, I'll throw in Hudson River Park. Park police are more than willing to ticket you if you should bike anywhere but the little road, which means you can't bike along the path from the road to the Pier 96 boathouse. Since pedestrians and bikers share bike space on that main little road, this doesn't make much sense at all. In fact, I can't tell you the number of times I've nearly been hit walking out of the boathouse space on Pier 40 by the park police themselves driving around in their little golf carts. Want to protect pedestrians? Get those things off the road.
Some areas in parks don't even allow you to walk your bike in, let alone ride it. Try going to a sports game up at Riverbank State Park on 138th. I play softball up there and I'm not allowed to walk my bike to the softball field where I can chain it against a fence and watch it. Instead, I'm forced to chain it in a place where the park police person in the guard booth takes no responsibility for it whatsoever.
With all the time and effort we're trying to spend on congestion pricing, and the fair hikes, the green initiatives, etc... why isn't there some serious bike friendly legislation going on in this city?
Here are some suggestions:
- It should be illegal to prevent someone from walking with their bike anywhere... in elevators, parks, etc. You don't make people with wheelchairs take freight elevators, and those things have just as many protruding metal parts that can do damage--because that would be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And don't even get me started on the size of some of the strollers people are pushing around the city... they're bigger than some bikes!!
- Every building with over a certain size should have to provide a safe and easily accessible space to store bikes AND be liable for their theft as if it took place in their own lobby. It would probably minimally impact their insurance bills and certainly provide an incentive to put the racks and storage space in a well lit area visible to lobby attendants. I had a bike stolen two years ago because the bike rack in front of 915 Broadway is about 10 feet past the slight lines of the guy at the front desk.
- Give out special unlimited Metrocards for bikers during good weather months that delay experiation for every weekday that you don't use the card. I probably bike about 3 out of every five weekdays when the weather is nice, but I still buy the unlimited card because of how many times I use the subway to go to meetings, lunches, bad weather days, days I don't bike... I did the math and its nearly a push, so I'm not really able to save on transportation costs by biking part of the time. You have to be a fulltime road warrior to save any money. Certainly there's no incentive for anyone else to bike once or twice a week.
May 7, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The Upside of Faith
So, there's a possible practical joke going on around me... or something that could be totally real... I'm not sure, but this morning, I was thinking about what the upside of believing people is. Clearly, there's an upside to being a cynic. If it turns out to be a joke, I can bask in the fact that I was too smart to fall for it. If it turns out to be true, then I feel like I didn't lose much because the situation was pretty unbelievable anyway--I certainly don't look foolish for not believing something.
That made me think about faith in general. What's the upside of believing in anything that you can't prove? God, love, the semantic web ... there are a lot of things we can't touch, taste, see, hear or smell that we rely on faith for, but why bother? If they turn out to be true... gravy. If not, at least we didn't lose anything or waste time.
That's the point, though... if we're talking about losing something or wasting time, we're talking about investment. In a startup, it's clear what the investment is. Someone gives you money, you give them upside... but what exactly is the investment and payoff for having faith in something non-financial... faith in love, in God, or whatever?
I answered this question in the shower at NYSC this morning, because I thought about the opposite. What if I didn't make those bets? That would mean I "wasn't invested"... and while I'm totally playing with words here, I don't want to live a life where I'm not invested--and that's really what you are when you don't have faith. You're not really betting on anything, really. You're just going what what you have and not assuming or beliving in anything more
Being invested in your own life has upside, especially as an active investor, because you get to share in life's profits--joy, laughter, bliss, etc... a lot more than you would if you were on the sidelines. Sure, there may be some quarters where we miss earnings and our stock takes a tumble, but over the long run, I'm a big believer that you need to be invested in your life... that you have to take risks of faith--in people, in ideas.
I have faith that Barack Obama is a good man with good intentions and the organizational skills to make things work better. By having faith, and voting for him, I'm looking at possibilities and potential for this country with a more open mind... maybe inspiring others to do the same. When masses of people believe in the possibility of change, it's funny how change happens.
I have faith that I'll find someone who will love and appreciate me... and who'll want to work together to with me to build a great relationship. Is it possible that it will never happen? Sure... and I'll be really disappointed, but by being positive and open to the idea, I'm also open and more aware of the people around me who may have that interest or know someone who might. If I don't have that faith, I'll be closed... I'll probably miss someone or be unable to connect with someone.
I have faith in something or someone larger than myself... That there's a powerful force for good in this world... a reason for being. If I just thought we were soulless lumps of chemicals, I'd be driven simply for chemical optimization, rather than trying to make a positive impact in the world around me, even at my own expense. By beliving that we are more than just bodies and neurons and synapses, I seek deper connections, and whether or not I find them, I am better for the process of seeking.
I have faith in my startup, Path 101. I know the odds. I know the day we run out of cash before we get more funding. I know that we're in the same space as a lot of other larger players. I believe we have a great idea and can build a passionate service around people-powered career discovery. I believe it's a much needed service and we can change people's lives by helping to give them direction and help support the discovery of their passions. By having this faith, I am more outwardly positive. I will attract more deals this way, more talent, and help build excitement--all key incredients to success.
So, while you might think it's just easier not to expect anything out of life, you're missing the equity upside and the risks really aren't as great as you think.
May 6, 2008 in Random Stuff | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2008-05-05
May 5, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Free Business Plan: My Application Inventory
The world's leading customer service organization, in my opinion, is Google.
Where else do we turn when our favorite application gives us some bizarre error message we don't understand?
And most of the time, a forum or Google Group will give us the answer.
But what about when it's a combination of applications giving you a problem. For example, I use Sunbird/Lightning as my calendar viewer (and gcal as the underlying host) and a few weeks ago, invitations to events stopped working entirely. I add someone via e-mail to an event, and they simply don't get it. No record appears of having ever invited anyone.
I've Googled the hell out of this thing, and came up empty.
What I really need is to find out who has the same combo of Sunbird/Lightning-GCal-Provider and see if it works for them. That would really help isolate the problem. What we need is an inventory of all the software we use, the combos, etc... so I can make myself public and find others using the same exact combo of stuff. I'd put a bounty on this problem, but trolling random forums where people may or may not answer feels like a waste of time.
In fact, it could automatically plug me into all these forums to mass post this problem. So, I type my problem into one place, and it goes and finds all the appropriate places to find help, and brings them right back to me.
Now THAT would be a helpful service.
May 5, 2008 | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
"I'll take, companies thinking bigger for $500, Trebek": Hats off to Xobni
I've written before about Web 2.0 Whac-a-mole--the tendency for interesting, lightly funded or bootstrapped startups to get bought out by bigger companies and then to disappear into innovation oblivion. It's really unfortunate, because a lot of them had the potential to be very disruptive, but instead had their red Swingline staplers taken away from them in exchange for some nice payouts to first time entrepreneurs who still owned a majority of their companies.
del.icio.us never became the people powered search competitor to Google. MyBlogLog never became a distributed social network across the web. Of course, nothing against those founders--it's difficult to turn down a bird in the hand, but certainly it seems like the idea of using their parent company's resources and reach to really make a bigger impact than they could have done alone hasn't seem to play out. Just ask the Tickle folks, who's $70 million baby bought by Monster died a slow 4 year death.
So when I heard that Microsoft was going to buy Xobni, I was pissed. That would have sent the chances of their ever being a Thunderbird plugin down to about zero. Small remnants of the service would have maybe made it into Outlook 2015, long after the frustrated founders left the clutches of their Redmond overlords. If you're long e-mail as the gateway to a smarter social graph, this was not an acquisition you wanted to see happen.
Seems like founders Adam Smith and Matt Brezina thought the same thing and so they walked away from the acquisition. Fantastic! Good for you guys! At the end of the day, money's great, but I think they realized they have a great opportunity here to be something a lot bigger... why not take a shot? They're obviously smart guys capable of building interesting products, so it's not like this is the only potential for money they'll ever have. It's not like two talented developers are ever going to wind up homeless. I applaud their interest in doing something bigger and look forward to being able to use their tools on either Thunderbird or gmail.
May 5, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
More brilliance from Arrington
Mike Arrington and a number of other A-listers are proposing an open source, decentralized version of Twitter, to improve performance:
"And we’d never have to deal with outages again."Twitter Can Be Liberated - Here’s How
Yeah, because it's not like Skype ever went down.... oh... um... wait... nevermind.
What Mike also fails to realize is that growth of the network and adoption is critical to a social service as well. Consider Jabber. How many new Jabber client downloads have their been in the last year compared to AOL, Yahoo! or MSN Instant Messenger? Twitter has enough of a challenge crossing over into the mainstream and they're a for-profit company that's going to eventually do more co-marketing and biz dev deals. How many users besides Mike Arrington and Dave Winer do you think this de-centralized, open source Twitter is going to get?
Echo chamber FAIL.
May 5, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The most ridiculous thing I've heard all week... Courtesy of Mike Arrington
"Facebook email, which they call messages, is becoming completely unusable as a personal or business productivity tool."Urgent Changes Are Needed To Facebook Messaging
So, what you're saying is... you'd like Facebook to work like Outlook? What about spreadsheets? Should it do Powerpoint presentations, too? Should it login to your bank accounts and manage your finances? A Salesforce plugin perhaps? So, basically, given enough time, if every web startup made Arrington their product manager, every application would do the exact same thing: everything.
May 3, 2008 in Venture Capital & Technology | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
