Celebrate International Women's Day By Linking to Five of Your Favorite Female Bloggers
I didn't even know it was International Women's Day today until someone told me. I think women need an RSS feed or something, so the community of people who are interested in women can stay more up to date. :)
To celebrate, I'm going to link to my favorite female bloggers:
danah boyd (apophenia) - I heart every word danah puts out onto the web. Call me a fanboy, but she's thinking about our digital lives and how we reflect them on the web as much as anyone, and even if I disagree with her, which I rarely do, I respect her passion for young people.
Shri Mahesh (Almost as Good as Chocolate) - Shri was the former VP of Product for eBay and has been a great mentor and more and more, a friend. She's a relatively newbie blogger.
Rachel Strate (Wasatch Girl) - Utah VC Rachel is finally blogging. After appearing on MyBlogLog months and months ago, tipping me off to her dominance of the most unlikely of niches - female VC analyst in Utah - I'm glad to see she's finally taken the blogging plunge. She also blogs over here about her exploits as a secret agent on the side... jumping out of planes and rock climbing.
Sarah Tavel (Adventurista) - More VC females... and a nextNYer to boot! Don't let the Rugby photo on her page fool you, though... she's won't tear your head off, especially not if you read her blog. She knows a lot about the SaaS market, which is great for her firm... you may have heard of them... Bessemer Venture Partners. They did this Skype thing...
Equity Private (Going Private) - My favorite anonymous blogger. She works as a VP at some boutique private equity fund somewhere... and a recent run-in with some motor vehicles nearly did in her blogging (and her), but fan support seems to have kept her going and I'm glad, because she's whip smart and keeps me in touch with the buyout market, which I would have otherwise long since forgotten about.
Elise Bauer (Learning Moveable Type and Simply Recipes) - Elise's MT blog basically taught me how to create havoc with my templates. Thankfully, I've had much more success with her recipes. She is truly a jack of all trades, as she's also very accomplished in aikido.
Joanne Wilson (Gotham Gal) - I have to admit, I've been a bit lazy with Joanne's recipes, because I got used to those cookies showing up at USV. Now, I've got to make my own instead... boo. I also like her takes on parenting social network savvy kids... because I often find myself in this conversation with a lot of people about the lines between controlling, monitoring, and just being in touch with what your kids are doing with their time.
Hmm... this post is getting too long, but I've got more... good problem to have I guess. Shoutouts to advertising bloggers Stephanie Rogers and Ann Handley. I'm sure I left someone off...
Credit: Why Investment Due Diligence is Really Sucks
When I was at the GM Pension Fund investing in venture funds, we always pushed hard on trying to raise the bar on our due diligence. We talked to a lot of CEOs to try and figure out which venture funds were worth their names and, at the end of the day, I'm not really sure we really ever learned anything about what makes success.
Here's the issue.... what makes a company ultimately successful is a combination of factors.... environment, product, competition, etc... and on top of that... tracing decisions to one particular person, be it on the board, the CEO, the VC, etc... is often impossible, because ideas are iterative. For example, we have a key part of Voki that you'll see develop post launch that started out as a meeting called by the CEO to "kick the tires" and just imagine the worst things that could happen to the product. At first, I thought it was a little late for that, but out of that meeting came a really fantastic idea that we're all really happy with. Who's idea was it? Well... we both sort of came up with it... and its been iterated upon by others in the company. I don't think it's really traceable to one person.
I was thinking that when we sat at our board meeting looking at our marketing strategy yesterday. Does it all stop with the CEO? The head of marketing? There are ideas in there that trickled up from our new Social Media Instigator.... which ones, I can't even remember... but one of them may be the key to the product, and at the end of the day, ask seven different people who came up with an idea and you'll probably get seven different answers... because the truth is, we all did... and even if one person came up with it, feedback and inspiration from others goes a long way to hatching an idea.
Who's idea was it to do sponsored search terms at Google? Who decided to allow pasting css and html in MySpace?
Fordham Wins vs Richmond 63-61
First round of the A-10 Tourney... Dunston has 21, Stout 17. Go Rams.
Fantasy League Time... Who do I protect?
Here's the deal. 13 Team League. 260 Fake dollars to spend. 10 Categories... AVG, HR, R, RBI, SB, W, K, ERA, WHIP, S. Top team in a category gets 13 pts, bottom gets 1. Total points, not head to head.
I can protect 3-5 players at 5 dollars more than last year's salary. Last year, the highest paid player went for 42 I believe.
Here's who I could protect at what prices:
Juan Pierre 26
Chone Figgins 16
Joe Crede 6
Michael Cuddyer 6
Anibel Sanchez 6
David Wright 34
Adrian Gonzalez 6
Bobby Jenks 12
Curt Shilling 19
What do you think? Which 5 do I protect?
Lesson #1 from NYC Hub... Heros, Leaders, and the NYC Generational Gap
After nextNY's Community Conversation on the NYC Startup Scene, I posted what I learned and promised to follow up in more detail. I'm going to go out of order and slightly alter what I wrote:
"4. Our "heros" have their volume set too low. We need to put a megaphone in front of the charismatic personalities of NYC and get them out in front of more people."
I think there's more to it than this. There's a generation gap in the NYC tech community that seems to me a lot more pronounced than in the Valley. Perhaps the big West Coast Venture funds propped up their failing bubble companies longer, carrying the community over the chasm created by the burst. I was at the GM Pension Fund, an investor in many of these prominent funds, from '01-'05, and saw many funds throw lots of good money after bad in an attempt to return the capital invested from their Vintage '99 and '00 funds. This allowed the Valley community a much softer landing than it seemed like the NYC companies had.
This really hit home for me because Jerry Colonna attended and really contributed a lot to the conference. Jerry was a pillar of the tech community in NYC through the late 90's. He had done a stint as the Editor of InformationWeek and helped co-found Flatiron Ventures with Fred Wilson. He retired from full time venture investing a few years ago after Flatiron got rolled up into JP Morgan Partners and has spent more time on professional consulting and educational non-profit work. I was lucky enough to get to know Jerry because he maintained an office at Union Square Ventures and shared our space... but most of the 20-somethings at the meeting had no idea who he was. Same thing with a lot of the young entrepreneurs I've met through nextNY. They don't necessarily know the Jason Devitt's, Fabrice Grinda's... people who built real stuff and exited in and around NYC. I think the same thing when I talk to David Rose, who founded the New York Angels. David's quite a character, and one of the most passionate people I know when it comes to getting excited about startups in NYC, but many of our members met him for the first time when we did Startup 101 last June.
This isn't to knock these folks for not participating more in the community of future tech leaders... Before recently, there hadn't been many opportunities to do so. Now, we're seeing the growth of not only nextNY, but many tech focused Meetup groups as well. The NY Tech Meetup has grown from 35 folks at Meetup's offices to 350 folks at the Great Hall at Cooper Union... and has spun off several niche groups as well.
It is so important for future generations to learn from the experience of those who came before us. Many young entreprenuers are asking... who are those people? Are there more Kevin Ryan's out there and who are they? How do we get them more involved in the community of young entrepreneurs?
There's also something about NYC tech personalities... they just don't act like big fish. Maybe it's the size and scale of NYC that makes people feel like it's just not realistic to be a big fish... so they just go about their business, work hard, and don't worry if everyone knows them. For example, I always think of the difference between Fred Wilson and Guy Kawasaki. Fred's a great guy and I loved working for him, but he turns down more public speaking appearances than he accepts and I could never see him writing a book... He's got all those blog readers in spite of himself and his modest personality. He would certainly never call himself a guru of anything. Guy's a very knowledgeable person, but he's a lot more skilled and interested in self promotion than Fred... and hey.. .that has led to success for him and certainly a big name, so more power to him. It's just a difference of style. I look at the USV portfolio companies as an example. There are very few big and loud personalities among the group... just a lot of smart, hardworking folks with great ideas. That may be great for their businesses--less distraction--but sometimes, a little hype helps the community. It gets the kids to stand up and notice that something is going on around them in the startup world and that maybe they don't all have to be Goldman Sachs investment bankers.
I've met a lot of great NYC tech personalities in the last two years and I wish I could put a megaphone in front of all of them... one that can be heard in the financial strongholds of this city, the city government, the colleges, the high schools.... because right now, I feel like there isn't enough touting and not enough vocal leaders with experience to guide the ambitious young generation around me.
Technorati says I'm linking to myself
About two weeks ago, Technorati found the underlying domain that this Typepad blog sits on and decided that it was linking to this domain... That's annoying. So every post of mine has one Technorati link back to it... from my own blog mirrored at Typepad. Ugh.
That sucker's comin' down... blustery night in Bay Ridge
Nothing good coming out of this lightpost.
My Perfect Day
I got into a good conversation with a friend the other day and we were talking about constructing a perfect day. I think it says a lot about someone. Here's what my perfect day would be like (within the limits of my normal experiences... no hunting spider monkees in Fiji, b/c I've never been there and couldn't identify one if I saw it):
It is summer in New York City... about 85 degrees with a light breeze. I wake up at 8, pack my bag and jump in the car. The top goes down and I drive into the city... over the Brooklyn Bridge, across Chambers Street and up West St. to Pier 40. I arrive a few minutes after the opening of the Downtown Boathouse and help get the kayaks out onto the dock.
The regulars start coming in one by one. They get the little safety talk from Vincent, who is 90-something, and I help them get into their boats. Every now and then, I go out for a paddle, knowing me to follow up a conversation with some pretty girl that started at the dock. I'm just a social guy, you know. :)
The regular volunteers make their appearences throughout the day... some to stay, some just to say hello on their way uptown or out for the day. Everyone who comes out of the water asks to stay in longer and all of the people who have never done this before can't believe it's free. They linger to talk about the boats and the water and how much has changed about the West Side over the years.
Around noon, we get a pizza delivered. We also get a surprise visit from a kayaking regular, who used to come down with her husband almost every weekend. She brings in her arms a great excuse for not being down lately...
By 2:30, I start heading out with things in order and other volunteers around to cover the rest of the day. I head uptown in the car to Central Park, luck out with a spot, and pop the trunk to break out my softball stuff. Glove, bat and cleats in hand, I make my way to the Great Lawn's northern fields, 7 and 8, just beyond the oval. Enclosed by a stadium of trees, it's a great place to play. There are no sunbathers to get in the way, but you can see all those folks on the lawn enjoying themselves with frisbees and blankets. But for now, it's gametime.
I'm playing on a team that has never come once came together... a mishmosh of people from various teams. Ideally, I could recreate some of those last hardball games I played when I was 19... with my best friend Brian closing out his pitching career and me behind the plate on the receiving end of the slowest, most frustrating curveballs you've ever seen... but I'm trying to be realistic with this day, so instead we're playing softball and I'm bouncing from third, to outfield to first. It doesn't matter where I play in the field, as long as I get to hit. I lace six singles to center and right field on six consecutive pitches--the only six I see in the game, which I actually did once. That's my kind of day at the plate.
Afterwards, I walk over to a NYSC on the West Side to shower up. Back in the car, all the way back downtown to Battery Park for dinner at Southwest NY. In all honesty, the food isn't even that great, but I just love sitting there after a long day in the sun, watching the sun go down. I guess it would be a date... someone I could share a great conversation with and feel comfortable and relaxed with... to just enjoy the moment. I love that spot.
Ok, so I'm realizing that my perfect day has a lot of driving in it. I don't mind it one bit, especially b/c there isn't any traffic in my perfect day.... but ridiculous as it may seem, it's back up to Central Park after dinner. By now, they've cleared the softball fields and some good friends have secured a spot on the Great Lawn for the New York Philharmonic's Concert in the Park. That's one of my favorite things to do all summer. Nothing like fruit, cheese and cookies on a blanket with classical music, friends, and fireworks after. Man, I love fireworks...
And at the end of the day, it would be nice to wind up at home, turn to someone and say, "Wow, that was really a perfect day... You know I had those six hits on consecutive pitches."
Strike Two for Out of Context Web Services
I'm not ready to shut down Twitter, but I'm close... and I heard a great quote about it tonight after the meetup... "I keep updating it hoping something will happen." Totally agreed.
Proof that the web is flat...
There's now a list of the 50 Most Important People on the Web.
You want proof that the web is still a democratic place that is ruled by the little people? Check out the dramatic dropoff after.... um.... about 15 or so.
Most of the people after 15 touch the lives of only a small handful of internet users and are pretty much unknown to most of the people not reading A-list tech blogs, with the exception of Tina Tequila of course.
Here are some comments on the list and notable exceptions:
- Phillip Rosedale coming in ahead of Meg Whitman and Jeff Bezos? I'm sorry, but market cap and actual profits say otherwise. You could say that eBay and Amazon are just a bunch of e-tailers, but consider Skype on the eBay side and all of Amazon's pay as you go backend web services as gamechangers. I still haven't seen Second Life disrupt any markets yet or change any games.
- Drew Curtis of Fark came in ahead of the VP of Engineering of Mozilla... I think even Drew would find that pretty laughable.
- Actually, Steve Jobs at #2... This is the web, right? As far as I knew, Steve Jobs is really effecting consumer electronics and digital distribution, but I don't really think Apple has much influence on the web. Unless they've upgraded, isn't Apple a hardware manufacturer with a piece of proprietary desktop software?
- Missing people? How about anyone from AIM?
Excited about meeting folks at SXSW
I'm so glad I signed up for SXSW. Not only does the content seem really interesting, but there are going to be some great people there who I've never gotten to meet in person. I'm really excited to hear danah speak and to finally meet up with Rob May from BusinessPundit. I've been reading BP and chatting with Rob by e-mail for probably at least two years. Matt Winn will be there, too, but unfortunately, no record of the event will get painted. CultureJunkie Stephanie is also going to be in attendance.
Also, a bunch of nextNYers including Noel, Andrew, and Michael.
Fred's also going to be there and so is Brian, which is good, b/c I owe him a meal.
If anyone wants me to look them up or wants to join me (or others) at particular sessions, I've posted at least through Saturday of where I'm going to be on my PBWiki.
Are you ready for some FOOTBALL!!
My ZogSports Football Team, "Ludacris Speed" is having its first practice today at 2:30 on 52nd/11th. Wooooo.
MyBlogsterbookrtube5.net: Assembling Social Networking 3.0 from the 10 best attributes of the social networks we have now
So Cisco thinks that by buying Tribe.net after buying Five Across that they're going to connect the world by way of all their big corporate clients.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen. Social networking is not about chips and routers or code or even design. It's people.
So what is the next wave of social networking? What features would the ultimate social network have? I think I can piece it together from what's already out there. Here's what features I think the ultimate social space would have:
- It should be a safe place to play, like Facebook. No spam, no viruses.
- It would allow people to attach themselves wherever they wanted to live, and dynamically by their natural actions, like MyBlogLog. Being social shouldn't be an overt action...it should be the result of social behavior, like blog or photo content consumption.
- It would have to be a platform like MySpace. A place where other people could build on top of it and skin it, but freely, without fear of being shut off and clearly established business rules for participation and revenue sharing
- It needs to work for me alone before it works for the group, like last.fm or Flickr or del.icio.us...all of which display my own content and behavior in an interesting and useful enough way to the individual user that they are worth using even before they get networked up.
- It needs to be focus on communication, like AIM. AIM represents the closest approximation of my real life network... the people I'm most interested in actually chatting with are the people I'm most likely wanting to be connected to.
- It needs to cater to a wide variety of interests and be hyperlocal like Craigslist.
- It should be dynamic and flowing in its display of activity, like Facebook, but in a way that is open to bringing in activity from other places, like SuprGlu.
- It should be conversational, like Google or Yahoo! Groups, but with features that allow conversations to splinter into sidebars.
- It should be mobile... Facebook has a great mobile site... prob the most functional and easy mobile site I've ever been to... Throw in a little Twitter, Dodgeball, GPS, etc...
- It should make my life on the outside, in the meatspace, better, like Meetup... because, as much as I'm jacked in, I don't want to live my life virtually.
Please feel free to add to this in the comments, on your own blogs, etc.
What I Learned at nextNY's "NYCHub"
Last night, nextNY had a great event at the midtown offices of CRESA Partners called NYCHub. (We had originally called it Alley 2.0, but then we found out there was a breakfast earlier in the week with the same name, and so I just left it the name of the wiki page, to avoid confusion. We had some great participates, including Jerry Colonna, Dennis Crowley, Alejandro Crawford, Saul Shapiro, and nextNY's own Darren Herman, and I'll write more about that later, but for now I just want to get my thoughts down and I'll blog more about it over the next few days.
- The need for space in NYC isn't about needing a place to build your business, its about a place to aggregate community and meet other creative people.
- Real estate is a red herring... no one seems to be having a real issue affording to live here. (Bay Ridge as tech center?)
- There is a serious lack of angel funding, and the expertise and guidance that comes with it, in NYC.
- Our "heros" have their volume set too low. We need to put a megaphone in front of the charismatic personalities of NYC and get them out in front of more people.
- We need to refocus on our natural business advantages. Instead of having the next nextNY open houses at AOL or IAC, the "tech" companies, we need to be having them at CBS Interactive, NYT Digital, Digitas, MLB Interactive and Goldman Sachs.
- UPDATE: After reading Darren's post, I realized I forgot the NYC education system as a point. NYC students need to hear a lot earlier about entrepreneurship as an option.
More thoughts on this to come!
Public market, where have you gone?
The market crashed or something yesterday.... or so I heard.
It really is amazing how far I've gotten away from paying attention to public markets. I'm a finance guy by background, and when I was in college, I rode the boom and bust like everyone else.
But, when I graduated in 2001 and took a job in the private equity group at GM, I started to get away from it... focusing more on pricing multiples when we were doing buyouts than anything else. By the time I got to an early stage VC firm, what the public market did from day to day was just a distant memory.
Now that I'm on the product side... who knows. I just toss the max amount allowable (hey, its pretax, why wouldn't you?) into my 401k, set it and forget it. I don't really believe I can "beat the markets" so I allocate based on risk tolerance. I guess as a homeowner I'm investing more in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn real estate than anything else at the moment.
Following the public market, to me, is a fulltime job, and I just don't have the time anymore. I pop on TraderMike every now and then just to see what he's up to, but man, that's a lot to keep up with. Not for me, not anymore. Sorry markets... I'm on autopilot.