Tom Terrific 2
Glavine's performance last night was wonderfully boring, as usual. Nice to see Beltran hitting at home, too. Wagner? He's John Franco with a 100 MPH fastball... always out of the strike zone, always makes it interesting.
So I'm totally jumping ahead here, but I hope they sweep, just because it would enable us to pitch Glavine twice against Detroit.
Is this really the best way to arrange these letters?
If I was an old subway car, I'd be nervous.
After Facebook, what will be the web's next billion dollar exit? Let's build a virtual stock market for startups.
Assuming Yahoo! gets some kind of a deal done with Facebook (can you say motivated buyer?), we will have had three billion-plus acquisitions on the web (Skype, YouTube, Facebook) in the last year.
So what's next? Who has the best shot of creating a billion dollars of value?
At first I'd say Craigslist, but I don't really see Craig ever selling. Perhaps he wakes up one morning and decides it needs a safe home just in case any pissed off New York real estate scammer vows revenge, but, regulatory albatross aside, I think its much more likely he'll "give it to the people" and maybe go public or something.
LinkedIn? I'm not sure they engage users along enough dimensions... it is too much of a business tool rather than the go to social network for adult professionals.
What about Revver or Spotrunner? YouTube got sold because they dominated the medium and Google thought they could figure out how to monetize it. What if these two figure out the monetization first and attract publishers and advertisers.... might be a necessary add-on... but maybe not for a cool billion?
Feedburner is dominating and monetizing a medium, with little competition... if and when RSS takes off, they could start making bank in a hurry.
You know what would be interesting... and something I would definately monitarily contribute to the production of? A virtual stock market for startups. I need something to do in the fantasy baseball offseason. I'd love to be able to buy and sell "shares" based on the predictive expectations of the crowd. That might be a very cool experiment.
Any other ideas for the next billion dollar acquisition on the web? I don't think it will be us. Our number is only $750 million. :)
links for 2006-10-13
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Where else can you find a blog post that speaks the current time and Central Park weather? :)
Former Mets, Current Yanks Pitcher Corey Lidle Dies in Plane Crash into NYC Apartment
Very sad story... Turns out the pilot of the small plane in NYC was Yanks' pitcher Corey Lidle, who got his started in the majors with Mets. Lidle died in the crash.
If it were me, I'd want them to play tonight's game, but out of respect for the family and for Lidle, I agree with Brooklyn Met Fan, they should probably cancel.
Small Plane Crashes into Upper East Side Apartment Building
Well, this is just bizzare... A small "general aviation" plane flew into a building on 72nd and York.
A few apartments in the building are on fire... details coming out. Hope no one was home.
YouTubers Reaction to Purchase
Pretty reasonable I'd say... We're not all raving lunatics in the consumer world, you know. Thanks to Jeremy for the heads up.
links for 2006-10-10
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Yay! Check out the address. That's us! We have a name! :)
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I say trade the both of 'em...
Dear Mr. Moritz...
Please bottle some water from your house and send it to me.
Hair clippings for me to wear as a good luck charm will also do.
Some people just have the magic touch...Google, Paypal, Yahoo!, and now YouTube, which just got acquired by Google.
We don't really need more money, but if you want to throw a token investment our way, I'm sure we could make some room for you in the cap table somewhere.
I don't really know what to make out of this deal. Google has the money to spend, and I think this is a better investment than putting up municipal wifi towers up. What else could they spend it on?
The upside is that this is a foothold into our video/tv viewing experience and the associated ad revenue.
The downside is that they haven't proven that they quite understand how to do community yet.
What's fascinating to me is that, at the time of the del.icio.us acquisition, they were "split internally" on whether to make an offer. How they managed to spend a billion six on such a big question mark is beyond me, just from a decision making point of view, whether or not its a good idea.
Nice quote about instant messaging/e-mail
It’s as if your id had a typewriter. In a world where everything is
instant, the delaying and censoring mechanisms that contributed to a
civilized life are gone." - Maureen Dowd, NY Times, Oct. 7, 2006
(I don't subscribe to Times Select... or get the actual paper copy, God forbid... my friend Alicia sent this to me.)
Hardware Veterans Retire... Death of Web Investment Prognosticated
So Sevin Rosen says that the market for venture is so bad that they don't think they can make "venture" returns, so they're not going to raise another fund.
And now everyone's flipping out about the changes in the VC market and whether or not there's overinvestment or lack of opportunities. Chill out. Seriously.
Sure, there are a lot of problems people can point to in the venture market, but these guys aren't even playing in the same world as the VCs that get talked about in the blogosphere for their high profile internet service investments. They're a bunch of hardware guys whose very long and successful careers, like the infrastructure opportunities they chased, are winding down. They've made a lot of money, and rather than try and figure out how to build the next Google, Skype, YouTube, they're letting another generation tackle a new generation of completely different opportunities.
This is the experience and focus areas of the firm's partners:
industry veteran of over 30 years.... semiconductor, telecommunications, and nanotechnology
in the early 1980s... was CEO of two high-technology companies...semiconductor and software industries
nearly 20 years as an executive at wireless carrier and service provider companies
joining Sevin Rosen Funds in 1983...
worked with three venture-backed companies in industries such as enterprise software, flat panel display and semiconductors
focuses in areas of imaging, computing, photonics, RF communications, and Semiconductors
director of Capstone Turbine Corporation, a public microturbine manufacturer
taken a lead role in nurturing... a pioneer in the optical transmission market
worked with companies in the integrated circuit and solid-state industries...spent 30 years at Texas Instruments
20 years in the semiconductor and networking industry
Chips, networks, displays... we've got these things now, thanks to guys like the partners at Sevin Rosen, but that's not where the new opportunities are. The opportunities aren't in the hardware that move the bits faster and faster... they're in the services that make the bits useful... that capture the bits, organize them... pair them with other bits for exponential value creation.
To even put companies like YouTube and Facebook in the same article as Sevin Rosin's decision is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You might as well say that all the medical device investors should retire, too, because investing in purely web based businesses is about as different than investing in chips as you can get. That's like asking these guys to do genomics.
Venture is not venture is not venture. It matters a lot what industry you're in. It matters what stage you play in. It matters what geography you invest in. I've written before that I don't even think that what is commonly lumped together and called venture capital shouldn't even be called a single asset class, but the media, and often limited partners as well, misunderstand these kinds of investments. Sevin Rosen's departure from the scene shouldn't be taken as anything more than the nail in the coffin on hardware investment, and maybe perhaps a remark on the Texas market... not an "industry" signal.
Gambler pays off
Kenny Rogers made the "best lineup ever assembled" look like a bunch of little leaguers who had never seen a curveball.
And now, the fate of the pinstripey team lies in the hands of... Jared Wright.
Baaahahahhahaha.
Chumps.
links for 2006-10-07
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Wooo... avatars #1.. err... um... wait...
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waaaaaaaaaa! waaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Cry me a river, Brad. Seriously.
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I don't think I buy this...
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Had Jamba with Mike McDerment when he was in NYC... good guy... I like what they're doing.
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This plays into Instant Information's strategy... interesting stuff.