|
|
|---|
|
|
|---|
Showing posts with label fred wilson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fred wilson. Show all posts
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Music Places
Recently I have taken to listening to a whole bunch of music on Tumblr.
The Music Tag On Tumblr
Some great places to go for music are these, in no particular order.
HypeMachine
Last.fm
Pandora
World Singles Chart
Shuffler
Soundtracking
Spotify
ViddyJam
Song Of The Day
SoundCloud
Two Hall of Famers would be Soraya Darabi and Fred Wilson, people who stand out in the NY tech ecosystem regardless, but I don't think that is accidental, great thinking in tech seems to go hand in hand with voracious consumption of good music. So listen: listen. They have great taste. They are both addicted to music.
Fred Wilson, Soraya Darabi: Both Crazy About Music
Soraya Darabi
A Surprising Blog Post From Fred Wilson
Soraya Darabi: Last.FM
FredWilson.FM (My first reaction to this was that this was a vanity URL)
Fred Wilson: DJ
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Joi Ito Goes To MIT Media Lab
My friend in Kathmandu Ashutosh Tiwari, Harvard graduate, CEO of the Nepali Times in Kathmandu, founder of Entrepreneurs For Nepal, among other hats, had a Facebook update this morning that caught my attention.
Joi Ito had just been appointed Director of the MIT Media Lab, and that was considered unusual, because the guy apparently had dropped out of not one but two colleges, Tufts, and the University of Chicago.
I left a comment. Joi Ito? The name sounds vaguely familiar. Then I went over to the Wikipedia article on him.
Joi Ito - Wikipedia
I learned more than I ever knew about him. Then I remembered. The first time I heard the name was Fred Wilson mentioning him at his blog in one of his comments, he said Joi Ito was one of the most amazing people he ever met. I looked up the guy. I tweeted him, he tweeted me back, and that was it.
I went to his Twitter page again today. Wow. The guy was following me - me, myself and I - on Twitter. I admire people who do that. Because when you follow me on Twitter, you see me much. You have to put up with seeing me much.
So I was able to send him a Direct Message: congratulations.
Wall Street Journal: The Wizardly Ways of a Tech Lab: the students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab don't have to wait until the professors aren't around before they can start tinkering. ...... from the e-reader to the lifelike robotic prosthesis now in development. ..... The Media Lab was founded about 25 years ago by Jerome Wiesner, MIT's president at the time, and computer-savvy architect Nicholas Negroponte, who became its first director. ...... the term "media" in the lab's title has taken on seemingly unbounded meaning. ...... With a stated goal to "invent the future," the Media Lab has a $35 million annual budget, a good portion of which comes from sponsors, many of them major corporations. ..... Part of the Media Lab mystique is that no one owns the intellectual property that its sorcerers and apprentices generate. Rather, the inventions and innovations that come of its "antidisciplinary" approach to problem-solving are put into the public domain for anyone to take up and run with. ...... Affective Computing, Biomechatronics and Cognitive Machines. ..... the overriding concern is the development of a device, a machine, a process, a system. ....... Development & Research, with research kicking in only to help out if development gets bogged down by a lack of knowledge or understanding. ...... Media Lab's innovations have produced the Amazon Kindle electronic book, LEGO Mindstorms robotic toys, RockHero music videogames and child-safe automobile airbags ...... a team whose members have backgrounds in "architecture, urban planning, mechanical engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, systems engineering, medicine, neuroscience, visual arts, business management, science, and sociology." ...... "one of the most important disciplines in the twenty-first century will be no discipline at all." ...... "today, society is awash in digital affordances" but admits that "paradoxically, we feel less in control of our lives." ...... the "stage is now set to take technology to the next level," where "ordinary people will be empowered to do truly extraordinary things."
A Few More Events?
Internet Week: Day 4
Internet Week: Day 4: Hectic Socializing
Internet Week: Day 3: One Event
Internet Week: Day 3: Taking It Easy
Internet Week: Day 2
Have You Seen Brett Martin?
Internet Week: Some More Events I Am Looking Into
Internet Week: Day 1: Observations
Internet Week: Day 1
One Location, Camping Out
My Plan For Internet Week
I decided Thursday evening that Internet Week was over for me. But after taking Friday off, and now Saturday off, I might be up for a few more events. I was just looking at the site, and these events are of interest.
Social Media Sunday Funday at the Dead Poet Bar
June 12 02:00 PM — 07:00 PM
The Dead Poet Bar
450 Amsterdam Avenue
b/w 81st and 82nd
There's this other event Sunday evening that looks interesting, but might be by invitation only. This reminds me of the Time event Wednesday evening. I showed up and got told it was by invitation only. When you click on the event website, and it takes you to the Time website, that is a red flag.
Webby Sunset Cocktails
June 12 06:00 PM — 08:00 PM
On Top of the Standard
The Standard
848 Washington Street
Online Cause Marketing: Promoting Your Brand Through Social Good
June 13 10:30 AM — 12:00 PM
New York Times - Conference Center
620 8th Ave
15th Floor
Preparing for the Mobile Revolution: What you Need to Know to Succeed in Mobile
June 13 03:00 PM — 04:00 PM
Hudson
Hudson - Floor 1M - Studio
356 West 58th Street
Mogulfish.com Launch Party
June 13 05:00 PM — 09:00 PM
320 Studios
320 West 37th Street
Level 14
Fresh from WWDC: Enterprise iOS - What works, what doesn’t work, and why?
June 13 06:30 PM — 09:00 PM
Pivotal Labs
841 Broadway
8th Floor
Out of CTRL - UntappedNet.com Launch Party/ Internet Week Closing Party
June 13 08:00 PM — 10:30 PM
Chelsea Manor
138 West 25th St
The 15th Annual Webby Awards I'd rather read up in the news the following day.
And there is this event Tuesday that Fred Wilson talked about at his blog a few days back. You show up and you get to meet some of the Founding Fathers of the Internet and Brad Burnham, the only Union Square Ventures honcho I have not met yet, do not know.
What Kind Of Internet Do You Want?
Oh, wow, this is an all day event. And looks like they are serving lunch. 25 bucks. That might be just for lunch. So the event is free. Good thing.
Looks like CDO Sterne is also speaking. I think she has done some good work the past few months.
What: INET New York
When: 14 June 2011
Image by campuspartybrasil via FlickrWhere: Sentry Center Wharton Ballroom, 17th Floor. 730 Third AvenueOkay, Fred Wilson, you got me in the red for 25 bucks, otherwise I like to go to free events. I am egalitarian like that.
The last time I broadcasted at this blog that I had just bought a ticket for an event - Internet Week - someone else picked up my pass. I hope that does not happen this time. I mean, I doubt the person who picked up the pass was Indian. Where is racial profiling when you need it?
Wow, this Internet Society event is really something. I am going to spend a few hours reading up on all the speakers. You have to get your money's worth, you know. Don't just link to their bio, also link to their Twitter handles. I like to announce to people before I see them in person.
Holy Moses, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Knight Vint Cerf. I literally think of the Internet as a country. These dudes are like .... okay, which of them is Thomas Jefferson?
RE: @fredwilson Okay, so I am going to this one. Looking forward to seeing Brad for the first time. I hope he is a ni… http://disq.us/283cu6less than a minute ago via DISQUS 
paramendra
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
What's Up With Pictures?
(This post was rejected by Technorati with this comment: It's not news and the only links are to your own blog.)
Image via CrunchBasePictures are all the rage, and Instagram deserves much credit. True, Facebook already had billions of pictures before Instagram even showed but with Facebook people thought - with the exception of Fred Wilson - it was a social network rather than a photo sharing site. With Instagram the facade was gone.
There is just something about pictures. The old adage of a picture being worth a thousand words might be true. Something tells me that even after the world might have moved on to gigabit speeds, pictures will still rule. Because a picture is respectful. You know going in that it need not be more than a split second experience. But a 30 second video is a time commitment. And so the picture will hold its ground even as bandwidth goes up. Actually pictures might expand ground. As the bandwidth expands, people might share more and more pictures. Go figure.
Talking about pictures, one of the unnoticed pivots in the industry has been FourSquare going into pictures in a major way. But Instagram still has a leg up and is on schedule to overtake FourSquare because just like the check in is the starting point of the FourSquare experience, but that is not true of Facebook, with Instagram the picture is the be all end all. The picture is not FourSquare's starting point.
Twitter wanting to do pictures is Twitter being a little late to the game but, hey, better late than never.
Image via CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBasePictures are all the rage, and Instagram deserves much credit. True, Facebook already had billions of pictures before Instagram even showed but with Facebook people thought - with the exception of Fred Wilson - it was a social network rather than a photo sharing site. With Instagram the facade was gone. There is just something about pictures. The old adage of a picture being worth a thousand words might be true. Something tells me that even after the world might have moved on to gigabit speeds, pictures will still rule. Because a picture is respectful. You know going in that it need not be more than a split second experience. But a 30 second video is a time commitment. And so the picture will hold its ground even as bandwidth goes up. Actually pictures might expand ground. As the bandwidth expands, people might share more and more pictures. Go figure.
Talking about pictures, one of the unnoticed pivots in the industry has been FourSquare going into pictures in a major way. But Instagram still has a leg up and is on schedule to overtake FourSquare because just like the check in is the starting point of the FourSquare experience, but that is not true of Facebook, with Instagram the picture is the be all end all. The picture is not FourSquare's starting point.
Twitter wanting to do pictures is Twitter being a little late to the game but, hey, better late than never.
TechCrunch: Twitter Is Launching Its Own Photosharing Service: the Twitpics and Yfrogs of the world can just give it up now
Image via CrunchBase
Thursday, May 26, 2011
PayCheckr: Not Dead Yet
The blogosphere collectively is bigger than Facebook just like the Chinese restaurants in America (Social/New Media: Blurry Lines) collectively are bigger than any fast food chain. And the PayCheckr button could find itself a sweet spot. But oh, can these dudes fight? There is something called a cat fight. I am looking for a term for fights among old white men. Bulldog fight?
It looks really good on my resume that I am a Board Member to PayCheckr. I still have a piece of paper that says I own 3% of the company. And only a few days back I left a comment to a Fred Wilson blog post called Worthless Stock Certificates. Well, worthless no more.
I have one from last year that says I own 3% of a company for "advising." The thing is history, but I keep the certificate for the art work on it. I remember Kozmo vividly. A high school friend of mine from Kathmandu was a top finance dude on the team. Nuru Lama. Personally knows Edmund Hillary, one of the first two to climb Everest. Wait, is Hillary still alive?
PayCheckr: Bringing Money Into Blogging?
PayCheckr Potential
The First Blog To Place The Paycheckr Button
The Paycheckr Promise
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Video Blogging Would Beat Panels And Ignite
Image via WikipediaInternet Week Fail WhaleIgnite NYC Premonitions
It is only a matter of time before I get into video blogging in a dedicated way. Video blogging, to my mind, would beat sitting on panels and presenting at Ignite, neither of which I am opposed to.
Brad Feld says he does what he does not for accolades or money, but because he has stayed curious. So maybe the lesson there is to work on being curious if you don't have the accolades and the money already. Those will follow if you stay curious. And staying curious is a reward on its own. It perhaps is the primary reward.
Fred Wilson does not like to sit on panels. He has sat on panels. But he does not like to.
JFK absolutely hated the idea of shaking hands.
To me all of that points to the promise of video blogging.
@paramendra Hi there. Nope, they're not online yet - few things to work out with them first. Thanks for checking out my work (and liking it)less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet Reply
Jessica Brillhart
brillhart
Favorite Retweet ReplyJessica Brillhartbrillhart
@brillhart I need to learn from you. In a few weeks/months, I want to get into video blogging in a big way. Don't know much technique.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyParamendra Bhagat
paramendra
Favorite Retweet ReplyParamendra Bhagatparamendra
Saturday, May 14, 2011
A Moment Of Appreciating Disqus
Image via CrunchBaseFred Wilson put out this blog post earlier today: Social Media's Secret Weapon - Email. Brad Feld wrote a reply post within hours: Implementing Social Media’s Secret Weapon. Fred Wilson showed up in Brad Feld's comments section for the post like Brad Feld had showed up earlier in Fred Wilson's comments section for his post. I read the two posts and all their comments. The little back and forth the two had at Brad's blog is really something. I am like, thank you Disqus. How else could I have become privy to this? 
These two dudes go way back. They are old friends. I once saw a picture of the two of them in a group photo. It is from way back. And these two also made it onto a list of the top 100 venture capitalists in the world a few weeks back, I don't know if it was Fortune, or Forbes, it was one of those. Long before I saw that list I have admired the excellence of their minds. Both of them also happen to have great blogs. They do a good job of giving you a front row seat to their action if you drop by often enough.
I think I just went ahead and framed the conversation.
A Boulder Invitation From Brad Feld Himself
Meeting Brad Feld
Top VC Bloggers: The Numbers Don't Look Right
Fred, How About Some Money?
Happy July 4 Fred Wilson, Brad Feld
To: Brad Feld, Subject: Iran And Me (Digital Ninja/Commando)
An Immigrant Story For Brad Feld
Netizen Has Arrived: A Link From AVC
A Surprising Blog Post From Fred Wilson
To Iran, With Love (2)
Friday, May 13, 2011
Monday, May 9, 2011
Curation, Content Creation
Image by brjkt via FlickrI said at this blog several years ago that content and search will never go stale. We will come up with new forms of content creation. We will find ever new ways to do search. If you think about it, Facebook is search. Twitter is search. Facebook is content creation and curation. Twitter is content creation and curation. But looks like we are about to embark on a new era of startups that focus primarily on curation. And that is a good thing.
ReadWriteWeb: 3 Reasons Curation is Here to Stay: Pearltrees has just surpassed 100,000 curators and 10 million page views a month, and in the past two years nearly a dozen companies that incorporate digital curation into their models have launched. ...... curation is one of the underlying principles of the Web ...... When Tim Berners Lee originally conceived of the Internet, he envisioned three principal functions: ..... Allow anyone to access any type of document ...... Allow everyone to disseminate his or her own documents ..... Allow everyone to organize the entire collection of documents ...... Hypertext and Google made it possible for anyone to access any type of document. Platforms like WordPress, YouTube, Twitter and even Flickr have made it possible to disseminate documents. As Twitter co-founder Ev Williams said at last year's Web 2.0 Summit, one of his overarching goals was to democratize publishing "by lowering the bar about as far as it could go". ....... curation has begun a similar process towards democratization, and that what we are seeing now is an adoption curve similar to blogging ...... quoted Russian mega-investor Yuri Milner as saying, "I think the next big theme is basically curation." ....... Fred Wilson, has written about the value of curation in social services. His contention is that curation improves the signal-to-noise ratio in social Web services that have become "messy and hard to navigate." Yet another high-profile thinker and investor, Paul Kedrosky, contends that curation begat search which is being replaced once again by curation. ..... curation is not just the flavor of the month, but a rapidly growing trend that represents both a third phase of the Internet and a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors.The Yahoo directory was the original act of curation. That got taken over by search, aka Google. Now major league curation is taking place across platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The next phase necessarily will be search based on all that curated stuff. Facebook could go deep into search down the line.
Facebook Could Do Well In Search
Image by brjkt via FlickrFred Wilson: Curation
Paul Kedrosky: Curation is the New Search is the New Curation: Curation steadily gave way to algorithmic search, which at first was just spidering of the web, and then more intelligent spidering with keywords. And then it became Google, with ranking algorithms that placed websites into a hierarchies of keyword-related relevance based on things like authoritativeness, as defined, in part, by links from other sites — by those original hand-curated lists, ironically enough. ........ What has happened is that Google’s ranking algorithm, like any trading algorithm, has lost its alpha. It no longer has lists to draw and, on its own, it no longer generates the same outperformance — in part because it is, for practical purposes, reverse-engineered, well-understood and operating in an adaptive content landscape. Search results in many categories are now honey pots embedded in ruined landscapes — traps for the unwary. It has turned search back into something like it was in the dying days of first-generation algorithmic search, like Excite and Altavista: results so polluted by spam that you often started looking at results only on the second or third page — the first page was a smoking hulk of algo-optimized awfulness. ......... we could head back to curation, which is what I see happening, and watch new algos emerge on top of that next-gen curation again. Think of Twitter as a new stab at curation ....... the re-rise of curation is partly about crowd curation — not one people, but lots of people, whether consciously (lists, etc.) or unconsciously (tweets, etc) ........ We are going to increasingly see nichey services that sell curation as a primary feature, with the primary advantage of being mostly unsullied by content farms, SEO spam, and nonsensical Q&A sites intended to create low-rent versions of Borges’ Library of Babylon. The result will be a subset of curated sites that will re-seed a new generation of algorithmic search sites, and the cycle will continue, over and over.
Robert Scoble: The new billion-dollar opportunity: real-time-web curation: Twitter did us all a HUGE favor by limiting us to 140 characters. It let us read HUGE numbers of people's opinions. Just today, for instance, I've read thousands of Tweets and shared out the best hundred or so. ...... Well, after having my son this weekend, I see I have a ton of places to share photos, videos, pictures, and little Tweets. But I don't have anyplace I can really put those all together with a nice blog post. ...... I've moved about 60% of my reading time onto my iPhone ..... sites like Mashable and TechCrunch are watching Tweets all day long and are regularly building blog posts out of those Tweets (but they are doing them by hand). ....... Blogging got to a few hundred million people. Twitter and Facebook are going to hit far larger numbers, why? Because the potential market for microblogs is bigger than blogging was. Think about it. Lots of people can write a status message. Not as many people can put together a good blog post. ..... Even more people will be able to curate. ...... we want to curate our lives and now that more and more of you will be pouring your lives into Twitter and Facebook you'll want to save some of those moments in a more permanent, and curated, way.
Tweet From Husni Mubarak
Former dictators are entitled to tech news as much anyone else. That is what I think. What do you think? By the way, Mubarak, in Urdu, means congratulations. I don't know Arabic, but I have a feeling it might mean the same in Arabic. This bird's name has a meaning.
The Wilsons Were In Cairo Recently
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Gender And The Wilson Household
Cover of John LennonOne thing I appreciate about the Fred Wilson family is that all of them blog. I really, really like that. It is not like they are odd, and I salivate for juicy details - although, as for some of Joanne's food posts. None of that. They are very normal as people. I have not met the kids (and that's fine with me), but I have met Fred and Joanne. I do visit Fred's blog near daily. The guy just recently got called officially the top VC in the world for the kind of return he has shown for the money he has raised. But I have followed him at his blog for two years before that admiring his excellence, and the quality of his mind. He is also just a good person. I have blogged about him a few times. More than a few times. I have reblogged their three children on Tumblr multiple times. I have taken pleasure.
This crew is like the First Family of the NY tech ecosystem. And they are accessible. One day, some day, I am going to ask for Joanne Wilson's autograph.
One thing the Wilson couple talk frankly about is gender and gender roles. And I really, really appreciate that. We might or might not disagree, but I get suspicious of people who simply don't believe in bringing it up as a topic of conversation.
Joanne was making three times as much money before Fred Wilson was not the Fred Wilson we know today. I take that in stride, but there are actually guys who might have struggled with that.
One day Joanne called up Fred to say there was no money in the bank, how did he want her to get grocery? He said put it on the credit card. That was a week before Fred sold Geocities to Yahoo. I got that story from a comment Fred once left at his blog.
My Non Personhood Of 2009, 2010
Chris Dixon Kind Of Person
You have to admire people like Fred Wilson and Chris Dixon. They were not born with silver spoons in their mouth. Their success as investors is authentic like that. I find their stories inspiring. Smarts and hard work and respect for people can take you places.
And today on Tumblr I came across a Gotham Gal post that had been reblogged by Fred.
A Mind Blowing Party
The Wilsons Were In Cairo Recently
The Gotham Gal
So Joanne Wilson dragged along Fred Wilson to New York City. (Thank you, Joanne) She was making three times as much. Later she decided to take time off from work to spend time with her young children. You know what, I really admire that. It does not have to be the woman each instance, but I also admire John Lennon taking five years out of his life to raise a son. In the mean time Fred took off. And that has allowed Joanne to do a lot of investing on her own. She also is very into the city's philanthropic circles. I personally pretty much draw a blank there, so I am glad she has a blog.
So let's go read the blog post.
The Gotham Gal: Still CEO of the Wilson household: as my kids started their exit strategy from our house ...... about 70% of my time was being spent on them and family stuff. ..... Once I pivot or come up with a plan it usually is like jumping on a rocket ship as I like to get things done...... I had been watching Lockhart from afar and loved what he was doing. I knew he was starting to look for funding and so I reached out to him. That move was the first pivot in the direction of regaining my own identity and life back ...... baking cookies, having dinner parties, doing construction projects to buying a car, doing a project with one of the kids, helping them clean out their closet or researching our next dog ....... One investment turned into about eighteen different projects that I am involved with at different levels. ...... Some are investments, some are non-profits and some are in the works so each take up different commitments at different times. On top of that I am blogging daily. ....... I have not left my old job which is CEO of the Wilson house. ....... I still make sure the refrigerator is filled, I still have dinner parties ( I do adore them ), I still bake, I still make dinner most nights, I still make sure the kids are getting what they need and I do have 2 still at home, I am still planning our travel vacations, I am working on two huge construction projects as well as a few smaller ones, I am still making sure that the windows are getting cleaned when they need to be, I am still making sure the trains run on time in our house.Only a family of investors will use the phrase "exit strategy" to the idea of kids going to college. We all get carried away at one time or the other. Also she uses the word "pivot" to describe rearranging her life after the kids are grown and gone.
Image via Wikipedia"On top of that I am blogging daily." Ha! That's the only way.
Women who manage both homework and work should be extra attractive to investors. If you can multi-task, I mean.
The knowledge economy allows for much flexibility of physical presence, and that is a boon to both productivity and family life. I work from home, and I am not even married. I far prefer working from home to the idea of a coworking space. If anything I end up overworking. I don't have discipline issues.
If I am ever lucky enough to have children, I'd love to do the John Lennon/Joanne Wilson thing, although realistically speaking it might not be a case of taking five years off, more like squeezing as many hours out of the week as possible to spend joy time with kids. I just love being around kids. I have long talked about becoming a very, very part time elementary school teacher on the side. Kids are joy. I was super popular with the kids of single moms at college.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Exuberance, Not Froth
Image via WikipediaI said it was not a bubble, but there was some froth. I am revising that. I am now saying it is not froth, it is exuberance. It is mostly a positive scenario. Fred Wilson: Megatrend Crosscurrents: The history of tech investing is a series of waves or megatrends that come one after another. Mainframes to minicomputers to PCs to client server to Internet, for example. But right now we are in the midst of a number of these megatrends all happening at the same time. There are at least four big ones going on at the same time:Wait, Did They Say Froth?
- Mobile - yesterday I wrote that at least 16% of the visits to this blog are coming from mobile devices and that number is up from essentially zero six quarters ago
- Social - Facebook will have 1bn users in the next year or so
- Cloud - A third of Netflix' new subscribers are opting for the streaming only plan
- Global - companies like Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Google see upwards of 80% of their users from outside the US and these numbers are growing faster than ever ...... Each one of these megatrends would be an investable wave on its own. But we are in an environment when all four are crashing on the shore ata the same time. Twitter, for example, is mobile and social and global.
Bubble, Boom Or Froth?
Is It A Bubble?
Glass Half Full Phase
At first Fred Wilson said maybe a bubble. John Doerr said it's a boom. That word does not quite capture it. I said froth. Fred said froth. Then Fred said glass half full. Now he is saying exuberance. And I agree. It is not bubble, boom, or froth, it is exuberance. Done right this can give America China like growth rates. This is about lifting billions out of poverty, and making the already rich feel like it is not happening at their expense or at the expense of the planet.
A Social Graph For When Everyone Is Connected
2011 is the first year of the Internet Century.
Image by Roger Lynn via Flickr
Monday, May 2, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Chris Dixon Kind Of Person
Image by Zach Klein via FlickrThere Are Two Kinds Of People In The WorldThis blog post by Chris Dixon has been making the rounds of the blogosphere. It has generated many comments at the blog itself. I happened to see the post soon after it came out, and I was the first or second person to leave a comment. I returned a few hours later, and there were already close to 100 comments. Obviously the post had sparked something.
Future Of The Internet: Easy, Says Dixon
One of my favorite Chris Dixon posts is equally short, it is one where Chris is relaying as to how the Internet stands to transform anything and everything.
Adding Intelligence To The Biggest Screen: TV
Nuggets From The Paulson Auditorium
Owning Equity, Owning House
Top VC Bloggers: The Numbers Don't Look Right
Chris Dixon: A New Breed Early Stage Investor
Will Online Ads Rise To The Occasion?
Venture Capital Segmentation
Event At Hunch: Gender Talk (3)
Event At Hunch: Gender Talk (4)
Is It A Bubble?
So Chris Dixon says there are two kinds of people in the world. My third comment at the post says, yes, there are, one is the rotten kind, wait, what are we talking about here?
Chris Dixon: There Are Two Kinds Of People In The World
You’ve either started a company or you haven’t. ”Started” doesn’t mean joining as an early employee, or investing or advising or helping out. It means starting with no money, no help, no one who believes in you (except perhaps your closest friends and family), and building an organization from a borrowed cubicle with credit card debt and nowhere to sleep except the office. It almost invariably means being dismissed by arrogant investors who show up a half hour late, totally unprepared and then instead of saying “no” give you non-committal rejections like “we invest at later stage companies.” It means looking prospective employees in the eyes and convincing them to leave safe jobs, quit everything and throw their lot in with you. It means having pundits in the press and blogs who’ve never built anything criticize you and armchair quarterback your every mistake. It means lying awake at night worrying about running out of cash and having a constant knot in your stomach during the day fearing you’ll disappoint the few people who believed in you and validate your smug doubters.Wow, 237 comments and counting. This is like of those Fred Wilson posts about Android.
I don’t care if you succeed or fail, if you are Bill Gates or an unknown entrepreneur who gave everything to make it work but didn’t manage to pull through. The important distinction is whether you risked everything, put your life on the line, made commitments to investors, employees, customers and friends, and tried – against all the forces in the world that try to keep new ideas down – to make something new.
In the same vein I am throwing a challenge to Chris. You, of all people, especially after this blog post, should be able to recognize an entrepreneur when you saw one. I am not only claiming I am one, I am claiming I am a big one. When the Google guys started they had this PageRank thing. I am claiming I have something similar but it is not in software, it is in group dynamics. When I say Group Dynamics I mean the offline component to GroupOn, that would be one small example.
I want you to bet 100K on me based on a 10 million valuation for my microfinance startup. I want a one page legal document like you say you like. I want to know if you can recognize me.
The Google/Facebook Of Microfinance
To Iran, With Love (1)
My Non Personhood Of 2009, 2010
Fred Wilson has repeatedly longed for an iconic tech company to emerge out of New York. Well, I am going to build that iconic company. Come along for the ride. I will compete with Greplin in your world in terms of market value.
Consider this a blog post mail. As opposed to an email. I think this is the most efficient way to communicate. And it leaves open options to meet in person, get on the phone, on Skype, and the like. I can take you out for dumplings, if you like.
Doing Two Tech Startups
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Glass Half Full Phase
Image via WikipediaFred Wilson: The Word Bubble: There will come a time when the environment we are in will be in the rear view mirror. And entrepreneurs should be crystal clear about that. This is a time to raise money and sock it away for a rainy day. Because it will rain. ...... deals are actually companies and most venture investments are held for five to seven years. I've likened them to marriages over the years. Don't let the lust for the deal lead to a bad marriage that you have to be in for the next decade. ...... we are in the glass is half full part of the cycle. Investors are focusing on the upside and ignoring the downside. That part of the investment cycle lasts for a while and then things change and investors focus on the downside and ignore the upside. Markets are defined by greed and fear. We are in the greed mode right nowI will have to agree. A lot of people sat on a lot of money for about two years. But money does not want to sit still. Money wants to grow. And right now it feels like the basketball that was held at the bottom of the pool was let go. It is not going to end at the surface. It will eventually. But first it will go into the air a little. We are in the air a little phase.
But this is no bubble. I don't see an imminent industry wide collapse. Going out of business also happens in the restaurant business, all the time, but that does not mean the restaurant business is going through a bubble.
In the late 1990s the internet was a haze, a promise. But now the internet is going everywhere, into every sector, all over the world. A lot of very real wealth is being created. This ride will last at least six, seven years, I think.
"The fundamentals are strong," like Chris Dixon likes to say. One third of his companies are profitable on seed money.
The music business is a good one to look at. Very few of the aspiring bands will end up a U2 or a Madonna, but many, many will make a living making music full time, more so than in the previous eras. Something similar will happen in the internet sector. There will be lots and lots of companies that will get profitable and stay there. They will not get bought, they will not go IPO. What's there to complain?
There will be plenty of failed companies. Investors will lose money. Sure. The best ones will. Union Square Ventures was recently called officially the best VC firm in the world based on the kind of returns they have shown on their money, and they expect fully one third of their companies to go down. And that's a good VC firm. There are bad ones that expect none of their companies to go down, and all their companies go down. The failures will be there, guaranteed.
But overall the internet sector is in great shape. At the end of the decade we will call this a boom decade.
A Mini Bubble Burst In Three Years
And even this glass half full phase I don't expect to end by Christmas. This phase might have a good two, three year run. And then corrections will kick in. Right now the mistake to make is to get too optimistic, then the mistake to make will be to get too pessimistic.
To You I Offer Buddhism And Yoga
The most important thing to note right now is some very real wealth is being created. There is good to great news.
Bubble, Boom Or Froth?
Bubble Talk Goes On: It's An Overshoot
Is It A Bubble?
Mike Arrington: We’re In The Middle Of A Terrible Blubble!: because they were out buying Internet stocks in 2000 instead of doing their jobs and reporting on the fairly obvious signals that the Nasdaq was about to implode. They won’t get caught with their pants down and their hand out again. Declare a bubble early and declare it often. ...... whatever is happening today in tech is absolutely nothing like what happened in 1999-2000. If you weren’t in the industry then, it’s understandable that you’d be concerned when you see Facebook being valued at up to $70 billion in private transactions ...... a Blubble. Because there is a lot of whining going on. ...... It was clear by the late 90s that this Internet thing had legs. And everyone wanted to be at the party. People flocked to Silicon Valley to take jobs like “Business Development Manager.” ...... When I left the law firm I was working at I became VP of Business Development the startup I joined, a former client. I was running the sales group too within a few months. I was 29 and had never sold anything in my life. But there I was, doing deals and in the thick of things. My stock options, Morgan Stanley told me, were worth over $40 million. ........ by 2001 I was basically broke and moved to London where I learned to appreciate drinking heavily at lunch every day because that’s what you did in London. ....... As a lawyer I sat in board meetings for my clients. And in those meetings I saw very well known venture capitalists tell these companies to spend as much money as they could as fast as they could, and then raise a bunch more and spend that as fast as they could ...... 2000 Bubble: Raise at least $100 million in venture capital. Spend! Hire everyone (particularly sales people)! Get revenue by any means necessary! Go Public! Sell Your Stock! Run! ........ 2011 Blubble: Drag blubbering angel investors into Series A rounds valuing your company at $6 million instead of $4 million. Hire engineers, lots of them, as many as you can. Don’t hire non-engineers or other overhead people unless you absolutely have to (thus the dearth of VP Biz Devs around). Balance fast growth with low burn (through cost controls or profitability). If you happen to have started Facebook, Groupon or Zynga, capitalize on your massive profitability by doing big late stage rounds that value you at something like 30x forward profits (which isn’t that crazy). If you’ve founded Twitter and have no revenue, capitalize on the massive worldwide cultural impact you’ve created instead.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
