Be Part of Voki... Contribute a photo
Have you ever wanted to help create a web app, but don't know how to code, like me? :)
Well, now you can get a lasting contribution into what is sure to be one of the most popular web applications around. *I hope*
Our consumer avatar product, Voki, which will be launching soon, allows users to upload their own backgrounds to their avatar scenes or select from a stock file.
We've populated the stock files with some of our own images taken by people in the office when they go on trips and such. It's sort of neat to see people using your photos on their webpages with a speaking character in front of them... in a photogeek kinda way.
So, I figured I'd open it up... If you have a photo that you wouldn't mind people using as a "stock" background for their avatar scenes in Voki, just tag it "vokiphotos" in Flickr. Please, no shots of people, nude people, etc... We'll use stuff that seems "backgroundy". Nature photos, city photos, pictures of rooms... basically spaces that people would want to be... or completely funky stuff that just looks cool even though you don't know what it is.... all acceptable.
By tagging your photos, you agree that we will be using them as part of a commercial product and you will not retain any rights whatsoever over the usage of those photos in Voki. We will not specifically sell your photos directly... just add them to the pool of free photos available to all.
Testing, testing...
Typepad Mobile 1...2...3...
Wooo...weather is warm enough to be biking again!
Come here for news and commentary you're not getting elsewhere...
I've decided that, for the next week, I'm going to check TechMeme and the del.icio.us and Digg popular lists each morning, and not post on any of the news I see there... and pick a topic entirely different. If Apple gets mentioned in any way, I won't mention Apple.
So there will be no mention of "One BILLION dollars" [puts pinky to lip] on this blog today...
Typepad Mobile Posting Garbage
The garbage you've seen posted here (...to be more specific, the unreadable garbage... erm... I mean.. the garbage in computer gobbledygook.... well... you know what I mean...) is courtesy of Typepad Mobile, which seems to be on the fritz.
links for 2007-03-13
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Someone Peter should know... She spoke at SXSW about open source hardware and was great.
Twitter is awesome, and it sucks... 5 reasons on both sides
So Twitter is all the rage at SXSW and I have to say, after being totally bored with it up until I got here, I've been Twittering like a fiend.
And, because of the SXSW buzz, I'm sure some VC who has never used it will want to throw 10 million dollars at it.
So I get it now, and I think it can be great, but I can also see going back home from SXSW and never using it again. So, basically, it's too early to tell, but here are 5 arguments on both sides.
Twitter rocks because...
- Most importantly, it provides others access to me that I control. Facebook demonstrated the importance of this over its Newsfeed blowup. Privacy is huge. I'm happy to give someone my Twitter name, because I can choose to stop getting their texts, and frankly, I don't much care if they still get mine. I control their affect on my SMS inbox, which I wouldn't if I was giving away my phone number for texting. Plus, allowing them to text me shouldn't allow them to call me... that's just braindead simple.
- Twitter is to UPOC as del.icio.us is to Third Voice. There was a great article written by the creator of Third Voice that talked about how seemingly small architecture changes, like foldering vs tagging, and defaulting to public vs private, made a huge impact on the ultimate fate of Third Voice and del.icio.us. I look at Twitter the same way. There's already a group SMSing service out there
Two Great Quotes About Living
- Driving 80 miles an hour in the fog... I can't see EXACTLY where I'm going, but that's not going to slow me down.
- Life as a DANCE rather than a race or something similarly linear and competitive.
SXSW Thought of the Moment: UI and Design
Has there ever been a really useful web service with great features that died because the UI was too complicated. I have a theory that users will figure something out if the promise of the product is compelling enough and the purpose of the product is clear, but the interface sucks. True or false?
Web 2.0 adaptation of Spaceballs
"I'm your blog reader's blog tagger's other digger's twitter friend..."
"What does that make us?"
"Absolutely nothing...which is what you're about to become."
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.