Right now, Gary Vee's book is #57 on the Amazon top sellers list.  Ironically, he's ahead of the Black Swan, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people, and Getting Things Done.  You want to talk about improbable, but effective...  look no further.

So why did I buy the book?  Like I said before, I don't even drink.

It's not about the book and it's not about Gary Vee.  It's about the idea that, by connecting directly with your audience, being authentic and customer focused, and using social media tools, even a brick and mortor biz like a wine store in New Jersey can create an experience bigger than themselves AND make real dollars all the the same time.

I've talked to Gary, shook his hand, and he bought me food.  There's a real live person behind this who really wants to see his customers have a fantastic experience--not just with his brand, but with their lives.

To me, buying the book is a vote.  It's a statement to every other company I'm forced to deal with on a day-to-day basis that I want the Gary Vee treatment.  I want to be spoken to honestly.  I want to be treated not only like a human, but treated like a great person.  And, I want to have fun. 

If Gary Vee's book shoots up to #1 on the Amazon bestseller list even before it gets released, it will be a real eye opener for other businesses. 

So, please, do us all a favor...  Go to your computers, open up your browser and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore...   and spend 13 bucks (plus shipping) to support the phenomenon."  You don't have to buy 3... just one will do.

If you don't know who Gary is... just watch this interview he did with Tara Hunt.

• The Bubba Strikes Back Fantasy Baseball League - By the Numbers: One slippery Bannister
  I knew we shouldn't have let this guy go.
  (tags: baseball pitching stats)
• Business Technology : Security is No Match for Chocolate and Good Looking Women
  Posted by Ben Worthen People are too trusting, especially when there’s chocolate on the line. Don't believe her lies A survey out today by the organizers of the tech-security conference Infosecurity Europe found that 21% of 576 London office workers
  (tags: fail funny security)

Do you react to your world or does your world react to you?

Not only in the startup world, but in life, we are faced with uncertainties...about strategy decisions, rightness of fit regarding new hires, and about the future. There are natural limits to our ability to information gather, and so often times, we are faced with a gap--how much I know about this decision versus how much I would like to or even feel I need to know to commit to a choice. How you approach that gap is a major factor in how you wind up living your life.

Some people just do the best they can. They recognize the inherent imperfection in the system, work hard to research all the angles and then when they feel like they've exhausted all the angles, make a choice. They probably take longer than the average person but at least they feel comfortable with their choices. This type of decisionmaking probably works best in an established, stable environment--whether its a company or even whether its a relationship. In a big, established company, there are probably proven methods for gathering more data and there's little chance that waiting a little longer to make a decision is going to be the end of the world. Similarly, the distracting routines of an established relationship can often buy you some time to figure out the right next steps. And why wouldn't you dwell on decisions longer...you've got so much structure in place and potentially at risk...houses, kids, cars, just...stuff.

But in new relationships--ones with people, companies, markets, etc.--you often can't get more data and its possible that you can't even really afford to spend lots of time dwelling on decisions. That's because your relationship is really all you have. Routines are too new or maybe nonexistent, so you can't hide behind them. In a company, there may only be one relevent next step to think about, and all eyes are on you to make a call. This highlights the effect of how you make a decision can impact relationships, especially given the emotional investment that new relations and new companies carry with them. If you're too quick to make a call, and you appear to ignore th gravity of the decision, you could give the appearance of not caring or not being as invested as other stakeholders. Take too long and you'll cause doubt--especially among the people who have clarity of vision. If you're the last one to see what everyone else sees, how long will you continue to be seen as a leader?

This is where approach and determination play huge roles. It's difficult to me "more right" before you can see more about the direction of an outcome, no matter how much time you spend on it. That's why I've always spent a lot more time and energy trying to achieve success AFTER decisions have already been made. Whether you're choosing a certain visualization for your user interface or deciding to get into a long distance relationship, the one thing you can definitely commit yourself to is to make something work, regardless of what it takes. It's the freshman roommate approach. In college, you get stuffed into a room with a stranger. You have no idea if it will work out or not, what the person is like, what their habits are. That's the thing. I think if you take the perspective that their habits are unalterably x or y and that the outcome even depends on any of this information, you will ultimately fail. The reason is that if there's anything you can count on in life, its change and uncertainty.

The only thing you can do in the face of that is to decide, ahead of time, that you are determined to be successful. You will not move out mid-semester. You will not leave a broken UI up on your site. You will not let distance, emotional or physical, get in the way of building a good relationship.

That is not to say that you should bash your head against a brick wall over something that just isn't working, but I think a lot of times the reason why things don't work is because we're not open to them working. We want things to work a certain way, so we can't accept alternative outcomes. We can't relate to different kinds of people in new ways because of stereotypes. We aren't open to being moved and changed by others.

Its interesting that the more you think of life as static, of facts set in stone, of things inherently good or bad, workable or not, the more static you become...only finding success when you're able to put your square peg in a square hole. The more you think of life and your future as to be impacted you, the more you'll also be impacted and changed by life as well.

Your coat and hat are gone
I really can't look at your little empty shelf
A ragged teddy bear
It feels like we never had a chance
Don't look me in the eye

We lay in each others arms
But the room is just an empty space
I guess we lived it out
Something in the air
We smiled too fast
then can't think of a thing to say

Lived with the best times
Left with the worst
I've danced with you too long
Nothing left to say

Let's take what we can
I know you hold your head up high
We've raced for the last time
A place of no return

And there's something in the air
Something in my eye
I've danced with you too long
Something in the air
Something in my eye

Abracadoo - I lose you
We can't avoid the clash
The big mistake
Now we're gonna pay and pay
The sentence of our lives
Can't believe I'm asking you to go

We used what we could
To get the things we want
But we lost each other on the way
I guess you know I never wanted
anyone more than you

Lived all our best times
Left with the worst
I've danced with you to long
Say what you will

But there's something in the air
Raced for the last time
Well I know you hold your head up high
There's nothing we have to say
There's nothing in my eyes
But there's something in the air
Something in my eye
I've danced with you too long
There's something I have to say
There's something in the air
Something in my eye
I've danced with you too long

2008-04-13_2231, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

:(

Back in 2001, I made a discovery.  The little cable wire in my apartment was actually spitting out scrambled channels--all of them, for free.  I don't know where it was coming from or who was paying for it, but it was obvious that all it needed was a descrambler.  Two hundred bucks later, I had all the channels I wanted for free.  Nice.

After about a year or so of DSL, I gave up on Verizon's crappy DSL service and thought about moving to cable internet.  The only issue was whether I was going to lose my cable stations if I had someone come and setup my internet.   I decided to chance it.  I got my cable setup, and after the guy left, in goes the splitter and the box, and voila... free cable secured. 

When I moved to Brooklyn, I needed internet turned on from scratch... and lo and behold, getting the cable company to give you internet without sending scrambled channels down the line is like trying to give someone hot water without giving them cold.  So, I pay my $44 a month for internet and continued to get free cable with my trusty box, whose cost amortized out to about $2.38.   Given the quality of the TV I was watching, I figured that to be a pretty fair price.

Well, Time Warner seems to have closed that loophole finally, because now I'm not getting anything besides single digit boring old regular TV.  No scrambled, no nothing.

Was it unfair that I was getting the free cable?  Illegal, perhaps, but to be honest, I hardly watch any TV at all.  I'm never home.  I don't care about half the stations.  If I could just get ESPN, SportsNet New York, Comedy Central and SpikeTV, I think I'd be all set, but you can't buy that way.  The cable company forces these bundles of crap on me.  Even if I just wanted basic, it would cost me $57 a month.  TV should not cost more than the internet.  I get way more value out of the internet than I do out of TV.  If I watch 10 hours of television a month, that's a lot for me. 

So what should I do now?  I need to get my Met games...  and ESPN, maybe a bit of Comedy Central.  I can't even go all internet, because MLB.tv doesn't allow me to watch local games...  Only my cable provider can get me access to local games... web video from local teams is blacked out.

I'm thinking of putting a Slingbox at my parents house.... seems like the only viable option without breaking the bank.  Thoughts?

A while back, Donna Bogatin wrote a snarky blog post...   oh.. .sorry... let me be more specific as to which one.  I'm talking about the one she wrote about Path 101 when we wanted to reach out to LinkedIn.

Now, I'm all for a good snarkfest now and then, but reckless bashing of people who've worked their whole 20+ year careers helping to build up the startup community--incredibly well-liked and well-meaning people like Fred Wilson?  Seriously?  Fred doesn't even need to defend himself and knowing him, he'll probably ignore it.  I've got a little more Brooklyn in me than to not poke the bear on this one.

Ah... Isn't this your medicine?  Let me give you a dose...

I had the pleasure of meeting Donna last night at David Rose's awesome nextNY Angel Financing 101.  I don't read her blog, but someone pointed it out to me during the session and so I read her anti-Fred post on my phone while I was there.

Here are some highlights:

"Wilson also now puts the fate of delicious traction solely at Yahoo’s doorstop, apparently market unaware of the flood of social media services flooding the Web “market” competing against the not so proprietary delicious asset."

"After years of doing his darndest to sell such non-proprietary Web services to deep-pocketed firms, Wilson has suddenly seen the error of his financial ways: “big companies buy little companies and the innovation stops,“ he announced in February."

"Wilson... oblivious to hundreds of thousands of bootstrapped entrepreneurs for whom a successful “end game” has been, and always will be, the building out of long-term, stand alone, self-sustaining businesses, for their own full accounts."

Characterizing Fred as "unaware" and "oblivious"...      Pot.  Kettle.  Black. 

When she introduced herself to me, I shook her hand and smiled and said, "Wow...  angry post today, huh?"  It was a good natured jibe meant to start a conversation.  She said, "Oh, no... YOU'RE the one with the angry posts..." turned her back, and walked away.

Yeah, literally turned her back and walked away....Wow. 

Mature. 

And kind of hilarious. 

The people I was standing next to were kind of stunned, too.  Last time I checked, that's not the way mature adults act in professional settings.

But that wasn't all.  I didn't realize it was her that asked the question, but during the event, she asked David Rose how he feels about YCombinator trying to build companies in order to quick flip them instead of building long-term sustainable businesses.  Shoulder chips anyone?  David obviously responded that wasn't the case. 

What she failed to disclose in her question was that she had started up her own community advisory effort to help startups called StartupAlpha, which is part group blog, part offline community.  She lists herself as the CEO, so clearly, she's looking to somehow profit. 

The offline community part sounds like a neat idea:

"[It] broadens the tech entrepreneurship conversation by inviting all players in the startup ecosystem to network together offline, in the heart of the business capital of the world: Manhattan!"

Sounds like last night's meeting was the first nextNY event she's been to.  I guess she's missed the NY Tech Meetups, the Founder's Clubs, the Web2NY's ,the Web 2.0 Meetups, the BarCampNYCs, etc., etc. as well.

The best part was the irony of trying to start a community of her own and walking away from me at an event that ran under the banner of nextNY--the 1500+ member community that I helped to found, accidental as it's success may be.  She seems to have the same kind of approach to conversation on her blog, as many of her controversial posts have few or comments on them--because she, um... "moderates" them.

Well, the one thing I suppose she has going for her is that, since October, she has grown her LinkedIn network by 29%   She now has 18 contacts!! 

So here's my question...  How does Donna intend to help promote the startup community in NYC if she rips on SA 100's #3 most influential person in NYC tech who works for the the city's most prominent early stage VC firm, walks away from conversations with people much more tapped into the entrepreneurial community than she is, and poo-poo's Paul Graham's YCombinator?

I have one capitalized word for that and it begins with F and rhymes with pail.

I subscribe to a number of different keywords using the Twitter "track" feature.  Lately, I've been moving those over to Tweetscan (Isn't it only a matter of time before Twitter integrates this themselves?  They should just buy Tweetscan.)

One of the words I subscribe to is "Doostang", because I'm curious about the company.  Alex and I had the pleasure of meeting up with Drew Carpenter last week about how our products could work together--great meeting, Drew's an awesome guy.

Apparently, I'm not the only person interested in the company.  I just saw the following Tweet:

"Doing product research on Doostang. Anybody out there have an account that can invite me? Thx!"

Who said it?

With a little googling, you get to John Rabasa, who is 4 months into his job as VP of Product Development at ePals, which is a "global community of connected classrooms".  Totally makes sense for him to be poking around in Doostang... so, thumbs up John for getting to know the ecology of your space.

Clearly, Twitter is becoming more and more valuable as a business information tool.  Has Monitor110 and InfoNgen started mining twitter for market info yet?  For anyone who doesn't think Twitter has a business model, don't think that the financial services world won't pay for a robust, SLA wrapped realtime data feed related to different companies and products. 

...when people start forcing themselves to stop using your service because it sucks up too much of their time and energy.

Where else does this happen?

sex, alcohol, gambling, drugs, video games, tobacco, fantasy sports

All huge, highly profitable businesses!

Posted over on the Path 101 blog...

• scottberkun.com » Understanding Apple (Apple now the #1 Music retailer)
  (tags: innovation ipod markets music product)

"I don't drink. I'm just here for the phenomenon." 

That's what I told someone at an impromptu Gary Vee party the other night in San Fran.  I don't have any issues with it--just never got into it and prefer not to start.  To each their own, right?

So, the fact that I'm blogging about a wine videoblogger who owns a wine store in Springfield, NJ should mean something.

I first heard about Gary Vee (Vaynerchuk) at this year's SXSW.  When the sponsored parties in Austin got too crowded, Gary (conveniently sporting several cases of wine) threw an impromptu party at the Marriot.  The buzz was immediate... and my first thought was "Who the f is Gary Vee?"

Caroline McCarthy summed it up best when she said that Gary was the "Jay Gatsby of SXSW".

At first, I was pretty disinterested in the buzz.  By nature, I tend not to like stuff that everyone else likes.  I never saw Titanic and a big part of the turnoff for me was that everyone else did.  Plus, like I said before, I don't drink, so why should I care about a wine guy?

But the buzz grew...  and what I started to realize was that it wasn't really about the wine.  It was about people.  The other day, Gary inspired hundreds of people to just say something nice about someone else as part of "Good People Day."

That was it.  Just talk about good people, and link to them.

*Scratches head*

So now I'm thinking, "Either this guy's a nutball, or maybe he's on to something."

Turns out, it's both.  He's a bit nutty, but what convinced me that he was onto something was meeting him in person and seeing him in action.

Alex is kind of a foodie and so he got excited when Twitter started buzzing about Gary's trip to the Bay Area. Gary was speaking at Google and planned to get a party going that night.  Alex and I were hanging out with Rachel, and we all decided to check things out.

After some Twitter debate, Eos was chosen as the location.  We were some of the first to arrive.  Little by little, folks with that "I'm looking for someone I know from the interwebs" look started poking around. 

"Are you here for... um... "

"Yeah...  you?"

"Yeah...   When's Gary coming?"

The staff reaction at Eos was funny.  Apparently, they didn't know we were coming.

"How many people are coming?

"Well, it's tough to say...  You see, there's this thing called Twitter... and... um... somewhere between 10 and 5000 I'd say is a safe bet."

Soon, there were at least 50 people and the party moved upstairs.  Everyone was really excited and when Gary arrived, things became crystal clear.

It wasn't about Gary at all. 

It was about the wine... but... it wasn't really even about the wine, because it's what wine really represents.  Wine is people... it's people celebrating, it's people socializing.  It's getting to know a good wine and a good person... and that's what Gary does.  He doesn't promote wine.  He promotes people... other people... the company of others.

The only time I actually heard Gary say the words Wine Library was when one of the restaurant staff asked him if he was a critic--trying to figure out who the heck he was.  Points off for them for owning a a wine bar and not knowing, but either way it was only then that he gave her his card.  Other than that, he mixed with the crowd--people he knew and people he didn't.  He welcomed us and was genuinely excited to see us.

There were no logos, no pitches or speeches.  No "sponsor sessions".  It was just a great time and Gary footed the bill for the whole thing.... easily a few grand...  quite easily.  All that wine, some food, and my Sprite.  :)

What I was left with was a great experience and the desire to talk to others about it--exactly what every single brand out there is trying to do and almost all of them are failing at miserable at.

And don't tell me it's easier with wine, because I don't even drink the stuff and here I am talking about it to 2500 people.

All the hot air that gets blown around about social media, community, blogging, branding, etc...  and very little of it can hold a candle to what this random wine guy in Jersey does every single day.

And what does he do?  He's just passionate about what he does and loves people.  Notice I didn't say loves his customers, or loves wine drinkers.  He loves people.  That's critical, because most people aren't there aren't your customers.  They're just people, and if you don't show them some love first, forget about ever being lucky enough to call them customers.

And its making him money, too.  Wine Library does over $50 million a year in business, with internet sales increasing $10 million in the last two years alone.  But, all that seems like an afterthought, really. 

So this meandered a bit.  You want key takeaways?

Here's what I've got:

1.  It's not about Gary.  He promotes other people and encourages people to promote each other more than he ever pitches himself.

2.  He takes it to the streets.  You want people talking about your brand in person?  Talk with them about it--in person.  The sheer amount of people Gary meets in person is astounding.  How many people a year does the face of your company meet?  Does your company even have a face--and not just a face, but does your company have a handshake, too?

3.  Stay positive.  If you needed to feel better about something, who would you rather get a phonecall from?  Gary Vee or Mike Arrington?  The guy just overflows with positivity--and that attracts people.  People want to feel good.  They don't want to get dragged into blogwars, flamewars.  Gary doesn't say that his competitors "must die."  In fact, he probably shops at his competitors.  There's already enough problems out there to get people down each day--people are going to tire of you pretty quickly if you don't immediately make them feel good.

4. Give it away.  Do whatever you can to put your product in people's hands...  even if you have to give it away.  It gets people talking...  and they can't talk about your product unless they have it.

5. Get off your high horse.  By videoblogging about wine, Gary brings a somewhat sophisticated, maybe a little "insider" activity down to the level that everyone can understand... and he clearly wants everyone to understand it.  This isn't the kind of brand that says, "We don't want our ads next to user gen content" or "We only want a certain type of clientele."   Gary screams "join in... everyone!"

When I was in 8th grade, I had a zit on my forehead.

It was small, but I started messing with it.  I tried to pop it, but I made it worse.  It sort of semi-popped and then I went in digging the rest out and.... well,  it just got from bad to worse.  I needed a band-aid to cover the gaping hole I'd dug.

I should have left well enough alone, because no good can come from trying to dredge up what should obviously be ignored.

It's really too bad I never learned that lesson, because then I wouldn't be writing this post in response to Hank's "Blame the VC's" post.

Hank's post is misguided from the start:

"I believe it should be possible to start a small business and to have a small number of profitable customers, and to earn a living. From there, it should be possible to work hard, and to grow your business into something substantial. Until recently, this was the American way..."

Actually, "small number" and "profitable customers" rarely go hand in hand unless you run an ultra-premium high-end service--mostly because of this big ugly thing we economics minors like to call "overhead".  While the number may be larger or smaller depending on your business, I know of very few businesses that achieve profitability without some kind of scale. 

I suppose if you were painting people's houses, you charge them more than the paint and your labor cost you, and you're profitable after Customer #1, but that's not really a scalable business. 

And as for the American way, it certainly didn't work for Henry Ford. 

To my knowledge, he didn't charge the first Model T owner the entire cost of the factory.  He lost money at first, only making money when he found a way to innovate, bring costs way down, and achieve scale.

And on who's dime?

The Wikipedia entry on Henry Ford cites several early investors--VCs if you will, or certainly angels--who foot the bills until Ford finally figured out a way to lower the bills enough to pay them... and he seems to have failed several times before finally succeeding.

"- Backed by the capital of Detroit lumber baron William H. Murphy, Ford resigned from Edison and founded the Detroit Automobile Company on August 5, 1899. However, the automobiles produced were of a lower quality and higher price than Ford liked. Ultimately, the company was not successful and was dissolved in January 1901.

- Ford also received the backing of an old acquaintance, Alexander Y. Malcomson, a Detroit-area coal dealer. They formed a partnership, "Ford & Malcomson, Ltd." to manufacture automobiles. Ford went to work designing an inexpensive automobile, and the duo leased a factory and contracted with a machine shop owned by John and Horace E. Dodge to supply over $160,000 in parts.Sales were slow, and a crisis arose when the Dodge brothers demanded payment for their first shipment."

Noticing a trend here?   Ford went out of his way to get these cars as cheap as possible.  It's not a stretch to think that if Ford would have thought of a way to make money giving cars away for free to get scale (maybe make money just on replacement parts or gas or something) he would have done it--and he would have tried doing it on the backs of his investors, too.

Hank blames VCs for essentially breaking this tride and true apple pie model of business.  The reality is that, for years and years, outside investment has enabled businesses to fill the gaps between overhead and incremental revenue until scale has been reached. 

What Hank fails to realize is that profit and revenues aren't the same thing...so, just because you make revenues doesn't necessarily make you a better business nor does it preclude the need for outside capital. Amazon didn't turn a profit for years... and now they're making lots of money.  Without not only venture capital, but public market investment, that business would have never existed... and they were making revenues, just not at a profit.

Today, what has changed is that outside investors don't need to fund nearly the same amount of overhead... and no one likes funding overhead.  You could pour tons of money into the overhead of a company and never turn a dime of revenue or profit.  That's what the semiconductor business is like.  It can cost millions to develop a chip that just doesn't wind up working in production or that gets leapfrogged by a competitor. 

So, when VCs fund a free model, they're still doing the same thing they always did... fund the gap between incremental revenues and overhead... but those numbers look way different than they did previously.

Here's the difference:

- First, investment financing goes into a much higher percentage of variable cost than it used to.  You are at least funding businesses that has costs because people are using the service.  That's a step up from funding a business before you had a clue as to whether anyone wanted the service in the first place.  Your overhead is lower, and even some of your variable costs are lower.  In the "old days", the amount of dollars it took to create a business online was a lot larger than it is now.  Servers were more expensive.  Bandwidth was more expensive.  You paid Microsoft for all sorts of stuff that is now open source--free not because VC's foot the bill, but because thousands of individuals got to got together to collaborate and donate their labor to solve collective problems.   So, you can turn a profit with a lot less cash.

- We also have new opportunities for revenue that didn't exist before.  Indeed, for example, is profitable.  They've got 50 employees and they've got a helluva lot less overhead than Monster.  You can get your job crawled for free there.  Their model is that it's easy to get your job in their index, but they charge for sponsorship and placement.  So, basically, most of the people who get value from the service don't actually pay for it.  That's only possible when you're not hiring a bunch of salespeople to charge $300 to post a job on the site. 

Lowering barriers to usage and participation, for them, creates a highly scalable, lower overhead revenue opportunity.  Of course, they needed some outside investment dollars from Union Square Ventures to help them get there and now they've got a strong business.   

This is something Twitter is bound to take advantage of.  If you ever use the "track" feature on a brand, like I do with "jamba", you'll quickly get a sense the data coming off of that thing is way more valuable to brands and marketers for research purposes than it probably is to individual users. 

With costs so low and new data-driven business models emerging, people are trying to launch venture backed businesses that look very different than old business models, and perhaps look, to the untrained eye, like businesses that crashed in the late 90's. 

Some will succeed.  Lot's will not.  That's the way it's always been, so to portray the current situation as being something vastly different problematic is naive. 

When cellphone companies give away free phones to make money on minutes, should we cry out that outside investors are funding a broken business model?  After all, it's debt and capital markets financing that makes this delayed cashflow possible.

What about LinkedIn?  What percentage of their userbase pays for that service?  Yet, they're on track for $100 million in revenues this year.  I'm quite sure David Sze would be happy to "blame the VCs" for that!

Hank, you're way off on this one...  but you certainly started a conversation... I'll give you that.

Good luck if you ever need venture financing for your business, btw...   Regardless of whether you're right or wrong, ripping VCs isn't generally a good business model for financing your business.

"Hey, aren't you the guy that..."    

Need more proof that the inmates run the asylum?

The Mets are having a fan contest to select the song that gets played during the 8th inning of their last season at Shea.

They're being rickrolled.

"To post a misleading link with a subject that promises to be exciting or interesting, e.g. "World of Starcraft in-game footage!" or "Paris Hilton blows Busta Rhymes' dick" but actually turns out to be the video for Rick Astley's debut single, "Never Gonna Give You Up". A variant on the duckroll. Allegedly hilarious."

I subscribe to mentions of the word "Mets" on twitter...  the stream went crazy this morning with the call for rickrolloing.  It has 1500+ diggs at the moment, too!

Check out the TweetScan of this move by the fans to get Rick Ashley's "Never gonna give you up" played at the stadium.

I met Chuck Taylor from Affinity Circles at ERE.  He's a cool guy and there may be a lot of opportunity for us to work together.  I like the ideas they have around the future of their product.

He started using Twitter at the conference and I was showing him the tracking tool.  He decided to start following me and I told him that he'd get all my ridiculous little updates throughout the day.  I knew he had better things to read, but he was like, "No, no, that will be cool."

Apparently, I wasn't as cool as he thought...  busted!!   :)

The command you're looking for is "leave ceonyc"...   No worries, buddy.  "Can't win 'em all..."

The latest shiny sparkly thing in the web world is Muxtape.  For those of you who don't know, Muxtape is a music sharing service that allows users to upload and share a playlist of music though a simple interface.

The only problem is, technically, it's illegal.  Artists are supposed to get paid when their music is played.  While the fine print says that you're only allowed to play music you have the rights to play, we all pretty much know the deal...  The company will throw their hands up and say "we can't be responsible for what people are uploading" and then after they actually do get sued, they'll be forced to scramble to sign deals with the labels--the terms of which you know will somehow kill the user experience.

The path of innovation in the music startup world is horribly inefficient.  To do anything interesting, you basically have to start out doing something illegal, or nearly illegal, or something that will dig yourself in a royalty hole before you even get started.  Sing it with me, "FAAAAAAIL."

What we need is a set of APIs, not just to get legal music, but multiple ways of paying for it, that would allow innovaters to build on top of.  Getting and paying for music should be similar to other types of commodity data...like stock market data or player stats for my fantasy baseball team.  I don't care who gets me Metallica's upcoming album, so long as I have choices as to its form and the ways I can pay for it. 

So instead of having a long line of startups trying to sign deals with labels,, which is horribly inefficient and slow, there should be one company that handles digital delivery, rights management, compensation.  Labels should be purely evaluation, business, marketing, and publicity machines.

This company would have a flexible set of delivery APIs... Every song could be streamed, downloaded, previewed, even sampled.  It would be like the Yahoo! Pipes of music.  So, Muxtape could just stream from this company instead of requiring user uploads and doing the storage themselves.

What's even more useful is that these APIs would have liberal grace periods for new companies related to time and volume.  Give them time to prove out interest in their service, get funding, etc., without fear of prosecution or a big royalty bill.  Frankly, the data on which startups are taking off, who's being played, and by who should be worth it for labels to give the companies using this API a long leash and see where they go with it.

When it comes to payment, the APIs should be equally flexible:  Allow premium subscriptions for various types of all you can eat services.  Make insertion of ads from companies like TargetSpot drop dead simple. 

How about allowing users to buy concert tickets through the service and essentially build up credits for free music in the system?  How many times have you heard, "The artist makes more from the concert, so I'd rather spend money that way and download from Limewire and have it go to the labels?"

I easily spent $1000 on concert tickets last year...  and I'm likely to spend that much every year with easier access to free music--and great tools to help make recommendations to me. 

One breakthrough business model that a more startup-friendly model for music distribution gives you is the ability to buy the attention of the influencers.   If you have standardized data about who's listening to what, and when, you have data about where the influencers are, and you could sponsor their streams with more music.  If I was an indy band, I think I'd pay for placement on Fred Wilson radio if I felt like my stuff was appropriate for that station.  Certainly if I was a record label, I'd do that as well.  It's sponsored content.  Labels spend millions of dollars a year to promote bands--why not use that money to just put the right music in the hands of the right people?  Isn't that the premise of music based social networks like MySpace--only MySpace never built out a reasonable toolset that allows bands to analyze and make marketing decisions around reporting, nor a away to offer music to a targeted set of the right people.  Instead, they just had to spam everyone with friend adds. 

Imagine if you got an e-mail saying, "Metallica would like to sponsor your Muxtape.  If you would like to select a different band to be included as the bonus track on your Muxtape, click here, otherwise Metallica will be added."  You could do that with live streams, full-circle data about who's listening to what, and what else they're listening to, and the right set of business tools to allow Metallica to make that buy at scale when their new album comes out.

Ok, so shread this idea to pieces... why wouldn't this work?  Anyone else doing anything like this?

I'm headed out to the ERE Expo in San Diego--I got a very exciting invitation to be a part of their startup panel along with Benjamin Yoskovitz (Standout Jobs), Clint Heiden (VisualCV), and Dan Arkind (JobScore).  What's so cool about our panel is that we all represent different aspects of the job process...

You will be able to discover a career on Path 101, present yourself well with a Visual CV, engage with a company and apply through Standout Jobs and then hopefully make your way through the company's recruiting process, which might be managed by JobScore.  Nice!

Since I was out there anyway, it was startup cashflow-friendly to swing by the Bay Area and stay with friends.  Given the success of our first "Entrepreneurship Listening Tour" we decided to get in touch with a bunch of experienced people to get some feedback and to get on the Bay Area VC radar for later this year.

We're pretty booked during our days, but we'd love to catch up with and meet a lot of people.  On Thursday afternoon, we'll be co-working out of Citizen Space, and then heading out later to 21st Amendment.  Come work with us (or eat/drink with us)!   Tell us you're coming out that night here!

If there's anyone you really think we should meet--smart VC's, entrepreneurs, developers, please let us know.  E-mail us at us@path101.com or follow us on Twitter (@ceonyc and @alexlines). 

"It's Kylie at (Restaurant?) Capital.  I'm just calling to let you know that Josh is on his way there and he's about 5 minutes away."

...or Carly from First Round Capital.

"Hi, Charles. It's Mom. Nana just called. She booked a ride with (Ces and Roy?) tomorrow, so she booked, and she's coming into Brooklyn, okay"

...Who the f are Ces and Roy and why are they driving my grandmother around?  Ohhh...  Access-a-Ride!

Charlie, I'm picking up the (aero bed?) for you in (Lennington Panes?). It's $99.00 and I have a 20% coupon.

...Lennington Panes...   a window shop that sells air beds?   Ah...   Linen's and Things!