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I tagged it with: advice, dreams, fordhamclass
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I tagged it with: jobs, path101, jobsatisfaction
Real apps for real people with real problems
"So we are thrilled to be an investor in a company that has been organized since its inception around the key insight that we believe will drive the next several years of innovation on the web – the need to solve real problems in the real world for real people." - Brad Burnham on USV's Investment in Meetup
If only there were other companies solving real problems for real people.
Free Business Plan: Grease this post
Have you ever written something you really thought had a chance to go viral. Maybe it wasn't even linkbait--it was just something you thought was really original and thoughtprovoking, and if only the right handful of people, or a critical mass of your friends caught onto it, it would take off.
So what do you do?
You bite the bullet and you start asking for people to Digg it. Ugh. There's nothing worse than being a social media panhandler. It makes you feel stripped of your authenticity. You might as well be pushing Rolexes.
So, what if, instead of blowing so much social capital on Diggbegging, you could easly throw a few bucks towards it to get it in front of the right bloggers.
Feedburner had something a little bit like that--where you could figure out what the CPMs were on your blog and advertise your feed in the feeds of other people in order to try to get more users.
For businesses, easy tools like Clickable are really lowering the overhead it takes to have your own SEM strategy. What individual contributors need is a kind of mini-Clickable right at the point of creation. How great would it be if, right next to the publish button, there was another button that said, "Do you want to invest $10 in driving relevant traffic to this post?" The money could be used to not only do search placement, but sponsored placement as "Suggested sponsored links" in front of bloggers talking about the same things. They wouldn't get paid to reblog, so it wouldn't be like PayPerPost--you'd just be paying to get in front of people who are likely to reblog the idea.
Another aspect of this is a better way to actually get your friends to reblog, Digg, tweet, etc. on your behalf. What if I could sent one link around that gives people a menu with the minimum number of clicks necessary to spread it. They could have their blog id/password, twitter password, digg, etc. already saved, so all it would take are some checkmarks and some additional optional descriptive copy in a few places and press "spread". There are lots of times I would reblog something relevant that my friends send me, but I just don't have a lot of time to crack open the blog editor, do the appropriate cutting and pasting, etc. This would come in especially handy when people send me jobs to repost. I'd repost most of the jobs that people send my way, but it's kind of a pain in the ass. If I could create a trusted list of friends that are allowed to repost their job ads to my blog, and maybe even aggregate them, I'd pre-approve people to do it.
Because who really wants to be a social media panhandler?
Why I didn't really think Dark Knight was all that great
I seem to be the only human being in the world, but I was kind of disappointed by the Dark Knight. It was still a good movie, but definitely wasn't as good as Batman Begins. I don't know if it tried to do too much, but midway through the movie, I kept thinking that there was just too much plot going on here. I thought that truck flip scene was going to be the "final standoff" but there was still like an hour left in the movie.
It wasn't so much that there weren't good parts, but there were too many things that bothered me for this to get anything more than a 7, whereas the first one was close to a 10.
Here's what I didn't like:
1) Who is the Joker? In the original movie, we get the Joker backstory. The Joker was Jack Napier--an ambitious thug who falls into a vat of chemicals and gets a backalley hack to try to fix his face--only to leave that ridiculous smile on him. This time, we get nothing but the Joker keeps asking people "Wanna know how I got this scar?" and keeps coming up with new versions of the story. That's completely annoying because these new movie versions are all about the backstory. I wanted to know.
2) The whole Rachel Dawes character is a failure. What exactly did she do to warrant the love of two great men? Why does Bruce Wayne love her? Because they played together as little kids? She's kind of vapid in this one--barely even caring that Harvey Dent nearly gets blown away in the courtroom. (The gun just happened to misfire right? Am I the only one that thought everyone should have reacted a little more to that?) I didn't care at all when she died. Not only is she no MJ from Spiderman, who I think we all fell in love with, but Maggie Gyllenhaal looks distractingly like Kirsten Dunst.
3) I really hate the Batman voice. Why is Christian Bale doing his worst Al Pacino impression under the cowl? It didn't bother me so much in the first one, because Batman doesn't really have a ton of dialogue, but in this one, it just gets silly.
4) The Batcycle is Bat Feature Creep. I was waiting for the back wheel to get blown off so it could get converted to the Bat Segway.
5) Too much obvious foreshadowing. How many "face" references to Dent were there? Face of Gotham? Hmm... I wonder if he becomes Two Face at the end? Lucky for him that Two Face was already his nickname!
6) Phone sonar: We've seen that effect before--in DareDevil, when it rains.
7) The Bat copycats expose us to the silliness of the idea of a guy running around dressed as a bat. What I thought was amazing in the first one was how believable the origin story of a guy in a bat costume was... Like I could actually see it happening and not being silly. When the copycat asks Batman what the difference between him and Batman was "I'm not wearing goalie pads" can't be the answer, otherwise Batman really is just a guy with a boatload of cash and military equipment.
8) Since when do all of the killings in a superhero movie have to be accounted for? I hate the idea that Batman has to take the blame for Dent's murders. Did he really kill 5 or 6 people? I wasn't counting? Are they counting Morone's limo driver, too? Who cares who killed a mob limo driver? Can't they sweep that under the rug? Leave it as a cold case?
9) His death was tragedy--no doubt. But, just in terms of his performance, I honestly thought it was kind of understated. When I think psychopath in clown makeup, I'm thinking REALLT creepy. Robin Williams was once mentioned as a potential Riddler before Jim Carrey got it, and his performances in 24 Hour Photo and Insomnia were beyond creepy--they were downright disturbing. I just didn't feel like the Joker was really that unpredictably nuts in this one. I did get my hopes up in the beginning, though. Between the "What busdriver?" line and the amazing disappearing pen, I thought we were in for a real sicko... in a funny kind of sick way. Didn't get him again until he walks out of the hospital in the nurse outfit...not much in between.
My del.icio.us links
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I tagged it with: groups, hilarious, pr, rubyonrails, whoops
My recent tracks on Last.fm
The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:
Great rant on commercialized blogging
Dispair:
"...How precisely Mike Arrington continues to have a readership is a mystery, and trust me, I’ve studied the topic..."
and hope:
...the core idea that everything finds an audience should be held up and remembered. Clung to fastidiously; A life raft for the ignored, for the invisible."
The other side of Paul Graham's Coin: Ideas on the kind of VC we'd like to get funded by
Paul Graham just posted some ideas on what kind of startups he'd like to fund on the YCombinator blog. I suppose if you're already working in these areas, that's great news for you, but to be honest, if you're not passionate about one of these things already, I never believed in the idea of just methodically picking picking a sector to start something in. Fabrice seems to be doing a bangup job at it, though, so I could be totally wrong (although his passion seems to be the methodology and the process itself, though).
Anyway,this isn't the first time one of these lists has popped up before--and I'm sure it sends a lot of entrepreneurs scrambling. In order to provide balance in The Force, I thought it might be better to tell all the VCs some ideas about what kind of partner I'd like to fund Path 101. Let the VC's scramble around!
So here goes:
1) We're looking for a partner who is really passionate about helping people find their callings--someone who is looked at by others as a great mentor and actively contributes their career wisdom to others. If we're talking about our career advice tool and you have to ask, "Why would anyone answer someone else's career questions?" that means you don't actually provide that advice yourself when you get random e-mails from your school's alumni or people from your blog, etc. We want someone who knows what it was like to not know what you wanted to do and feels like we can really make a big impact by helping people with their career.
2) We want someone who really believes in backing people. Our product will take many public iterations before it ever feels "complete" and there are still many unanswered questions left that we will only be able to address over time. That means, at the end of the day, you've got a team and a market. We're sure the market of "people who aren't sure what to do with their careers" is pretty huge, so that leaves you with team as the real bet--and so we need to feel like our team has the confidence and support of our investors.
3) Someone with access to domain knowledge in our market. It will be some time before we build the recruiting inroads to our userbase, but it would be extraordinarily useful to be able to regularly pick the brain of someone who knows the space or can open up the right doors here. That's true for any startup--having a resource to go to in order to help grease the biz dev or acquisition wheels is seriously value add.
4) We want a user--someone who participates in the social web to the point where we say, "and this is how it plugs into people's blogs" they'll get it because they blog or know how they work, not just because "blog" is a buzzword.
5) Someone fun! I need to be able to pick on you via Twitter. If we can't laugh about something, hit up a ballgame, or just kick back and genuinely enjoy each other's company, it's going to make things a heck of a lot harder. We have a fun team (in a geeky sort of way) and we get along with each other really well. Our backers are going to be joining that team and need to be able to get along with us.
6) A partner who can get their whole firm on board. Obviously some level of this has to be attained to get a deal done, but sometimes partners change and other times, different partners or junior folks have something to contribute. I'd like to be able to walk into my VC's office and have just about anyone there be interested in talking to me--and not have to feel like I'm waiting for just one person.
7) Someone principled and ethical. We're in this because we want to make an impact on people's lives--because the difference in your life between hating what you do and really finding where you fit is huge. We also think it can be successful, but that's not going to be from taking advantage of others or squeezing every last dime. I want to feel like we're in good hands with a trustworthy partner and that's what I think I can offer in return.
In return, a VC will get a team that is extremely dedicated and passionate about solving a big mainstream problem with creative, appropriate solutions, that works really hard, and that they can trust in return.
Anything else I should be looking for?
Love and Startups
I want to find someone who not only loves me, but lets themselves experience love and doesn't worry about the chances of things actually working out.
Relationships are like startups. If you join one because you think it will be successful, versus just joining one because its interesting, worthwhile, and its something you're passionate about--regardless of its ultimate chance of success--then you shouldn't be in one. Most relationships, like most startups, don't last forever. They're also completely unpredictable, so you just find good people, communicate well, and do your best.
New goal: Meet everyone on the SA 100 List
The other day I was thinking about the NYC tech community and how most of the events I've been to lately are about up and comers, which is great, but I feel like I still have a lot to learn from those who are a lot more experienced.
So, I'm going to try to make a concerted effort to meet up with more folks that have had prior successes and try to learn from them. Hopefully, they'll get something out of meeting me as well.
Seems I've met about a third of the list already... I don't know if I'll get to all of these folks (how likely is it that Barry Diller will grab a Jamba Juice with me, right?), but given the aggregate wisdom of these folks, I think it's a worthwhile pursuit.
Here's where I'm starting from:
Bonus: The Newcomers list
Ariane de Bonvoisin, First 30 Days - Met her at Laurel's breakfasts, but she's lovely. I'd meet her again in a heartbeat.
Jonathan Butler, Brownstoner - NEVER MET
Court Cunningham, Yodle - NEVER MET
Rich Greenfield, Pali Capital NEVER MET
Darren Herman, The Media Kitchen - Played dodgeball with and against him, and he's a Path 101 angel
Mike Hudack, Blip.tv - Met lots of times - cool guy
Alex Iskold, AdaptiveBlue - Met several times, part of the USV fam
Michael Jackson, IAC - Never met
David Karp, Tumblr - Met... Meeting David at the W should be on everyone's NYC tech scene todo list.
Alexis Maybank, Gilt Groupe - NEVER MET
Caroline McCarthy, CNET - She needs to play dodgeball with us... obviously met.
Douglas McIntyre, 24/7 Wall St. - NEVER MET
Scott Meyer, About.com - NEVER MET
Betsy Morgan, Huffington Post - Just met at Laurel's breakfast
Chris O’Brien, Motionbox - Met several times
Anand Subramanian, ContextWeb - NEVER MET
Andrew Weinreich, MeetMoi - Met at USV
Nate Westheimer, RoseTech - Duh
Bryan Wiener, 360i - NEVER MET
Benjamin Wolin, Waterfront Media - NEVER MET
Jeffrey Zeldman, Happy Cog Studios - NEVER MET
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I tagged it with: chatterous, funded, startups
I tagged it with: interesting, nowweb, summize, twitter
I tagged it with: interesting, science, thisisgoingtobebig
Sign us up, VC Mike: The Burn/Risk Ratio
Mike Hirshland nails how I feel about the timing of Path 101 (except for the market part--there are more people trying to figure out what to do with their careers than you can shake a stick at):
"For the immediate future, what makes sense is to iterate and experiment. During this phase, product, market and adoption risk remains high. The idea is to learn as much as possible about all three of these, and remove a big chunk of these risks, but to burn as little capital as possible during this phase. In the experimentation phase, we want to learn a ton but spend a little.
Once we think we have learned what product will get adoption in the market, and how we will make money from this product/market match (which nearly always takes a few more iteration cycles than originally thought), we then should kick into execution mode, in order to get real live proof points that the model actually works in practice. This is the time to staff up with the team necessary to go to market.
But until then, no need for the bus dev and sales guys that had been in the plan."
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Is it Obama's Racial Divide Issue, or McCain's?
Poll Finds Obama Candidacy Isn’t Closing Divide on Race
Now, let's actually look at the numbers...
According to their polls, 31% of white people have a favorable opinion of Barack Obama.
...but only 35% of white people have a favorable opinion of John McCain.
Overall, 62% of whites either have a favorable impression of Barack Obama or don't know enough.
...and only 70% of white people feel that way about McCain.
I don't know about you, but these numbers don't really show me a big divide on race. So, basically, 37% of white people don't like Obama, while 28% of white people don't like McCain. Hmm... I wouldn't exactly call that a huge racial bias against Obama--9% Really? Big whoop.
There is a big racial divide in this election, though... but its not what you think.
57% of blacks don't have a favorable impression of John McCain. In fact, only 5% do, and the rest are undecided. So, blacks dislike John McCain by almost a 2:1 margin over whites not liking McCain. Over six times as many, by percentage, whites like Obama as blacks like McCain.
So who's really the racially divisive one? Seems to me it's John McCain.
Smart thinking about alumni social networks
"Telling alumni what tools to use, and how to use them is old school, and they won't care one way or the other that we have certain information on our web sites...We must let alumni build their own online activities, using a framework we provide for the purpose of enabling that process."
What do the right investors do for you? Summize vs. Tweetscan
There's often a bit of anti-VC sentiment among the entrepreneurial community. You hear how VCs just want to smash you down, force you out, control your company.
So when the news was officially confirmed that Twitter bought Summize, I got to thinking about Tweetscan.
Tweetscan came out with their Twitter search earlier than Summize--who changed their product model. However, it was Summize that went out and took some funding ($750k) from Betaworks.
Tweetscan seems to have remained a one man show--built by David Sterry, who remarked recently that "Running a search engine is a very hardware intensive task and it's a challenge to keep it fast while providing the results people want." Tweetscan seemed more like a really interesting side project than an attempt at company building. Maybe David wasn't looking for anything more. That's fine. It was a great project, but clearly now that Summize IS Twitter Search, it will likely become the default. By the looks of the traffic, it already had:
Not only was Summize able to build a team, but they got some really thoughtful, well connected investors on board. Their investors and advisors helped them with the decision to focus on Twitter search--which was a reapplication of their technology away from generalized web sentiment. Of course, not to mention the fact that John Borthwick says specifically:
"The deal started with a conversation with Fred Wilson about how conversational search can evolve into navigation, about how important navigation becomes for UGC as you go mainstream — it concluded with the deal that was announced this morning. Betaworks is now a twitter shareholder, and excited to be one."
So, when your investor is having this kind of smart conversation with an investor in one of your likely acquirers, you're at a HUGE advantage. This isn't someone pitching your company to get flipped--this was some pretty high level thinking (and outside the valley thinking, I might add).
So while you're protecting all your equity from those big bad investors, ask yourself the question of who's having these types of conversations with key decision makers and thinkers about your company. "Who's a lot more experienced than I am that thinks intelligently about my company's strategy--and cares about it?"
THAT's the kind of investor that makes the rest of your equity worth multiples of what it is the moment they take their 20-30%.