Posts By / seth levine
Twitter is my instant messenger
I’ve been off instant messaging for years. There was nothing about it that I found appealing or that added to my productivity. I realized this morning that Twitter has become my new IM. I publish what I’m doing (and as a result people know if they can reach me or not, whether to try me at my office or on my cell, etc.). I stay in touch with my friends and colleagues by following what they are up to (and therefore know how to get in touch with them if I need to). Through following and being followed I keep up with more people and don’t have to "check in" as much because I know what they are doing, where…
Big Company. Little Company
I was out at the Microsoft Mountain View campus a few weeks ago for an event hosted by their venture relations group. I had the chance to meet Chris Liddell, MSFT’s CFO, along with 3 of their divisional CFO’s. It was a pretty wide ranging discussion from how they are thinking about M&A to several strategic area of focus to how the divisions are working together on projects that cross divisional boundaries. The thing that struck me the most was not the WHAT of their thinking, but the HOW. I participated in a break-out session with Tami Reller, CFO of Platforms and Services division (which includes their search and online advertising properties). There were about 15 of us in the…
My first music post
Excuse the shameless pitch but I feel compelled to tell you about the new Soul Patch album, Sooner or Later. Soul Patch is a band that includes my partners Ryan and Jason. Sooner or Later is the band’s aptly named second album (aptly named because it was 6 years in the making). The band’s music is a mix of classic rock, a bit of funk and soul spiced with great rhythm and outstanding musicality. I really like their style and this new album is fantastic. Here are a few links to check out to meet the band, sample the music and buy the album: Soul Patch Web Page, Facebook page and schwag Sooner or Later Album Page Buy the album…
Know your audience
I don’t know what it is about the last few weeks – maybe the change of season; maybe something in the water – but I’ve been absolutely amazed at how often people have showed a complete lack of comprehension for who was in the room with them. This may sound more calculating than I intend it to, but I think its a good practice to always consider who you’re talking to before you start in on a conversation. This is especially true when you’re negotiating for something, making a request or otherwise trying to drive to a specific outcome. I’ve witnessed several pretty amazing examples of a complete lack of thoughtfulness around this notion of late. From making idle (and…
Know what you don’t know
[see the bottom of this post for an invite code to a new service that helps solve the problem I’m describing here] It’s probably passe to say that we live in an information economy. It’s also probably not correct anymore because really we live in an information NOW economy. Staying on top of the topics that are important to you and your company has never been more important. And with the explosion of media sources (particularly on-line) this has never been more of a challenge. Back in the day, large companies would outsource the function of knowing what was said of them and their competitors to various "clipping services", so named because they would line up the major new outlets…
How I don’t travel
We have a great partner dynamic at Foundry. We’ve all worked together for at least 7 years (in some cases over 10 years) and are close friends as well as colleagues. We also have pretty varied styles and opinions. Case in point – Brad’s recent post on his travel habits. I couldn’t be more different in how I approach travel. Heading to the west coast, Brad likes to get up insanely early and take the 6am flight to SFO so he can start his meetings at 8:30. I’ve done that about a dozen times and finally realized that I just can’t deal with the 22 hour day that results from it. I was doing it a lot on Mondays and…
Have funds, will travel
My partner Chris just put up a post on the Foundry blog about our geographic (actually non-geographic) approach to investing. We’ve talked in past posts about how we organize our thinking about potential investments into "themes" that we use to guide our focus. One of the important precepts of taking a thematic approach to investing is that we don’t create artificial boundaries that limit where we’ll follow an investment theme – we let the theme guide us to the best companies that we can find, regardless of where they are located. In the past this has taken us to Chicago, New York, the Bay Area, Orange County and many points in between. It does mean that there’s more time spent…
How do you make money on the Internet?
My partner Brad Feld was interviewed yesterday on NPR’s Talk of the Nation on the topic of how companies make money online. You can listen to the broadcast here. The key take-away ultimately is that is you aggregate enough traffic you have a handful of options for turning those eyeballs into cash (probably worth of a full post about the pros and cons of these various models, but no time today to get that down on paper). Brad did a great job and I’m psyched that I now know someone who’s been on TOTN!
This Internet thing is just a fad
A 1995 article by Clifford Stoll has resurfaced on the Newsweek site: The Internet? Bah. Hype Alert: Why cyberspace isn’t and will never be, nirvana. Of course its fun (and easy) to make fun of pundits with the benefit of hindsight, but this one is particularly juicy with its sweeping – and as it turns out completely off base – prognostications. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic. Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online…