Cracking the Code

JUNE 23, 2008

Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Monday, June 23, 2008. Made to Stick! Can you believe this? Well if not, you are right! This video is a very smart viral marketing initiative from Cardo Systems , a provider of bluetooth headsets and it reached more than 6m eyeballs (this number includes the different versions of the video as well as the videos of people trying the experience to show it is a scam!)

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review Viral Europe 48

SoCal CTO

JUNE 14, 2008

I'm blogging from the CalTech Enterprise Forum. The topic is: Betting Your Company On An Internet Platform? A very interesting topic, especially for those of us involved in developing for start-ups. At the CTO Group that I organize in Santa Monica, we've had lots of discussions around this. The basic conclusion was that it was a bit premature if you were talking about a serious, funded start-up.

Internet 150

Internet EC2 Java API 150

Professor VC

JUNE 6, 2008

ProfessorVC. The last blogger in Silicon Valley. Friday, June 6, 2008. Is it the Horse or Jockey? It seems appropriate to have this discussion as Kent Desormeaux grabs Big Browns reins and goes after the Triple Crown tomorrow at Belmont.There is an age old debate in the venture business on whether it is better to bet on the horse (business/market) or the jockey (management team/founders).

San Jose 28

San Jose Technical Review Norway Angel Investor 28

Hacking Startups

JUNE 16, 2008

Facebook users fall into two categories: giggly and serious. Facebook user experience could be better if Facebook took this dichotomy into account. Ignoring the difference pushes apps to be giggly and serious users to be unhappy. Giggly 75% like pokes, quizzes, pic forwarding, fun games, selling friends, glitter on profiles. They express themselves through style and interact with friends using the mouse.

Viral 79

Viral Silicon Valley API Distribution 79

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in

Startup

Eric Friedman

JUNE 23, 2008

I recently downloaded firefox 3.0 and I think it is great. It is fast and secure and works very well. With that said I had one question that I wanted to help others answer as well. After using FF 3.0 for a few days the Smart Location bar started to populate with my browsing habits, and I found it distracting and not very useful. Also known as the address bar, the smart location bar in Firefox tries to guess where you are trying to go using the places you have already been.

Search 60

Search Security 60

BeyondVC

JUNE 5, 2008

The world that we live in trades on reputation. What that means is that eventually whether you are raising capital or landing new customers, your references will matter. If you are an entrepreneur, a VC will want to do some deep reference checks on you and also on any major customers or partners. If you are trying to land that big customer, naturally the sales propsect will ask to speak with other customers to get a better understanding of the technology and your service.

Reputation 60

Reputation Portfolio Partner Security 60

SoCal CTO

JUNE 10, 2008

It's funny how things intersect in life. I just ran into Chris Gammil's post New Era of Social Innovation where he describes it as: The model takes the best of the OPEN model and pushes right out into the open, further distributing idea sourcing, team forming, development, commercialization and economic distribution. What are some of the drivers? The social web is making it easier find people with similar passions for creation/innovation The social web is making it easier to find people with com

Distribution 150

Distribution Social Media Web Conversion 150

Pascal's View

JUNE 23, 2008

In the continuing spirit of permanently changing my energy consumption patterns to reflect the new reality of our “here-to-stay” twin energy and climate change crises, I am converting my house to solar power. I was referred to SolarCity by my friend John Fisher of DFJ, an investor and a director of the company, as a one-stop shop to get this conversion done.

San Francisco 28

San Francisco DC Aggregator New York 28

Hacking Startups

JUNE 18, 2008

If you think the coming nuclear winter will make job market tough for employees, you need to hear about the job offer my daughter got recently. The job has: $0 salary and no equity (you’re supposed to be compensated in experience). no benefits other than vacation and sick time: no insurance, for example. no possibility of promotion or raise, ever. no job description: just do what you’re told. micromanaging boss asks about project status every hour. strict hours, starting at 8:30AM sharp. if you’

Salary 55

Salary Equity Employee Marketing 55

Eric Friedman

JUNE 15, 2008

The Google Browser Sync project will soon be discontinued. This is sad news because many folks love this service and have been blogging about browser sync shutting down in the past few days. I am in this small group of people who love the product, especially when switching to a new computer, but I suppose that just isn’t enough. In a Google world where there are more projects than they can dedicated engineers to I suppose they have to shut down some.

Engineer 60

Engineer Product 60

Jason Ball

JUNE 17, 2008

If you're reading this blog, then you might like recommendation engines. I've been continuously impressed by Amazon's recommendation engine. As I've expanded what I buy through Amazon (heart rate watches, cooking utilities, computer peripherals, etc.), Amazon has done a very good job of processing those likes -across categories- and making very intelligent suggestions that have resulted in purchases.

Engineer 28

Engineer Mobile Internet Programming 28

abovethecrowd.com

JUNE 19, 2008

I haven’t written a public post in over two years, and many people ask me when I might write again. The bottom line is I have been really busy. Busy with our investments here at Benchmark, and busy with three growing kids at home. But in the end, I am quite fond of writing, and [.].

Internet 40

Internet Web 40

SoCal CTO

JUNE 10, 2008

A while ago I posted about Secret for Networking at Events - Prenetworking where I recommended that people should look at who's attending the event prior to going to the event in order to make their networking more effective. I've received a lot of positive feedback on the post. Since I posted on this and since I've been using this approach for quite a while, it has become pretty obvious that part of the reason that old school organizations / event producers are not getting the value of providin

Social Media 150

Social Media Southern California Media California 150

VC Adventure

JUNE 6, 2008

53

53

Hacking Startups

JUNE 13, 2008

Google targets AdSense revenue sharing so that publisher gets a bit more than the next best option, which is usually Yahoo. Yahoo running Google ads puts Google even closer to monopoly in contextual ads, reducing the revenues of all AdSense publishers. Consumer startups struggling for a better model often rely on AdSense for revenue. The alternative to the Google deal for Yahoo was, of course, accepting the Microsoft offer.

Search 45

Search Startup Revenue Advertising 45

Eric Friedman

JUNE 6, 2008

I just downloaded and installed the new Flickr software for Blackberry users. It does not work yet on my Blackberry Curve giving me the following error but I am sure it will be fixed soon. Uncaught exception: net.rim.device.api.system.UnsupportedOperationException. There are a ton of people out there who want to use Flickr and having an official app is certainly great.

Software 60

Software Email 60

Jason Ball

JUNE 5, 2008

Library House's newsletter yesterda y (free registration req'd) highlighted an article by David Storey in the FT- making the case that there is no correlation between an experienced entrepreneur/management team and a company's success. Storey summarises this belief [that failure is accepted in the US, and that it is a source of learning] to dismantle it, arguing that knowledge gained from a failed business makes little difference to future business success, due to the unpredictabilit

Entrepreneur 28

Entrepreneur Germany Venture Capital Founder 28

aweissman.com

JUNE 11, 2008

skip to main | skip to sidebar. aweissman.com. Maximizing the serendipity around you. Jun 11, 2008. The Velocity of Data. While eating Chicken Adobo at Cendrillion every other day for the past 6 months, we talk constantly about the value of data - how can an application or a technology create value to an existing or new group of users through the creative aggregation, manipulation or structuring of data.

Aggregator 21

Aggregator Search Naming Advertising 21

Pascal's View

JUNE 29, 2008

A very interesting Day 2! Some highlights: First Amendment issues and the specific domain of government regulation over free speech are narrowly confined to content creators over the licensed spectrum. For example, had the famous Janet Jackson Super Bowl breast exposure incident occurred on cable TV as opposed to broadcast TV, there would have been no regulatory issue over indecent exposure and hence no grounds for the FCC to get involved.

Marketing 28

Marketing Government America Distribution 28

VC Adventure

JUNE 6, 2008

48

48

Hacking Startups

JUNE 18, 2008

'If you think the coming nuclear winter will make job market tough for employees, you need to hear about the job offer my daughter got recently. The job has: $0 salary and no equity (you’re supposed to be compensated in experience). no benefits other than vacation and sick time: no insurance, for example. no possibility of promotion or raise, ever. no job description: just do what you’re told. micromanaging boss asks about project status every hour. strict hours, starting at 8:30AM s

Salary 40

Salary Equity Employee Marketing 40

Eric Friedman

JUNE 2, 2008

In my recent article about being bullish on widgets I was asked a lot about supporting data. The article was primarily my own thoughts, but nonetheless people always want more stats. Read Write Web has a great article about watching widget stats for US politics. They do caution that this is no indication of an outcome, but it it certainly significant.

Widget 60

Widget Campaign Web Social Media 60

Eric Friedman

JUNE 1, 2008

On a recent blog post on the Live Search blog I read that the book search division will be winding down and closing soon. It is my understanding that they will now be turning over the investment in hardware and software to those that can use them thus subsidizing what would normally be a high cost project to scan books. They will also be looking to the book publishers and other sources to simply index libraries that are put in front of their spider vs creating the content themselves.

Search 60

Search Software Cost 60

Hacking Startups

JUNE 16, 2008

'Facebook users fall into two categories: giggly and serious. Facebook user experience could be better if Facebook took this dichotomy into account. Ignoring the difference pushes apps to be giggly and serious users to be unhappy. Giggly 75% like pokes, quizzes, pic forwarding, fun games, selling friends, glitter on profiles. They express themselves through style and interact with friends using the mouse.

Viral 40

Viral Silicon Valley API Distribution 40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 13, 2008

'Google targets AdSense revenue sharing so that publisher gets a bit more than the next best option, which is usually Yahoo. Yahoo running Google ads puts Google even closer to monopoly in contextual ads, reducing the revenues of all AdSense publishers. Consumer startups struggling for a better model often rely on AdSense for revenue. The alternative to the Google deal for Yahoo was, of course, accepting the Microsoft offer.

Search 40

Search Startup Revenue Advertising 40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 12, 2008

'Garry Kasparov Griefed by Flying Penis : In Soviet Russia, Second Life plays the world chess champion. RC helicopter with a giant penis attached buzzed around Kasparov’s opposition assembly, in real life.

Russia 40

Russia 40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 12, 2008

'Redesign A First Step In Bringing Order To The MySpace Chaos : MySpace is redesigning. 25% of all Americans visit MySpace monthly, making it largest site in the U.S. Disturbingly, 12% of all online minutes are spent on MySpace.

40

40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 13, 2008

'NVCA Model Venture Capital Financing Documents : When a larger than usual set of lawyers develops universal VC funding documents, they end up with documents that appear to satisfy no-one. This is too bad, because the idea of standard financing documents is great. I wonder if you could make each document fit on one page.

Venture Capital 40

Venture Capital Finance Developer 40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 12, 2008

Garry Kasparov Griefed by Flying Penis : In Soviet Russia, Second Life plays the world chess champion. RC helicopter with a giant penis attached buzzed around Kasparov’s opposition assembly, in real life.

Russia 40

Russia 40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 12, 2008

Redesign A First Step In Bringing Order To The MySpace Chaos : MySpace is redesigning. 25% of all Americans visit MySpace monthly, making it largest site in the U.S. Disturbingly, 12% of all online minutes are spent on MySpace.

40

40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 13, 2008

NVCA Model Venture Capital Financing Documents : When a larger than usual set of lawyers develops universal VC funding documents, they end up with documents that appear to satisfy no-one. This is too bad, because the idea of standard financing documents is great. I wonder if you could make each document fit on one page.

Venture Capital 40

Venture Capital Finance Developer 40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 12, 2008

'Judge Rules That Police Can Bar High I.Q. Scores : Police in New London, CT, deny job interviews to people with IQ scores too high. Unfortunately, the article does not specify the threshold.

40

40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 12, 2008

'Vobile, video fingerprinting tech (VideoDNA) : Doesn’t modify the video. I infer from marketing materials the fingerprint is roughly 1% in size of the original. Doesn’t mention computational costs.

Video 40

Video Cost Marketing 40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 12, 2008

Judge Rules That Police Can Bar High I.Q. Scores : Police in New London, CT, deny job interviews to people with IQ scores too high. Unfortunately, the article does not specify the threshold.

40

40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 12, 2008

Vobile, video fingerprinting tech (VideoDNA) : Doesn’t modify the video. I infer from marketing materials the fingerprint is roughly 1% in size of the original. Doesn’t mention computational costs.

Video 40

Video Cost Marketing 40

Hacking Startups

JUNE 29, 2008

'“[O]ne-third of adults said high gas prices had made them more likely to shop online to avoid driving.” - Envisioning a world of $200-a-barrel oil - Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles 40

Los Angeles 40