My last post generated a bit of harsh comment (a few on the site, but many more in private e-mail and on a few other sites that picked up the theme). Apparently I came off as pretty insensitive (perhaps ‘jerk’ would be an appropriate description) in how I described my approach to some of the “can I get 30 minutes of your time?” meetings that I seem to have a difficult time saying no to (note to commenters: I do see value in the meetings and as a general rule spending time getting to know as many people as possible. Hey – at least I TAKE the meetings . . .). Trying to roll with that theme, I’ve been thinking…
Posts By / seth levine
Why are we here again?
I should probably do a better job of controlling my meeting schedule. I don’t and as a result end up with too many ‘networking’ meetings (i.e., where I’m on the receiving end of the networking). I have two observations about these interactions: 1) Left to their own devices, people tend to ramble . . . ramble . . . ramble. The conversation lacks focus, direction and purpose. Sometimes this is fun; most of the time it’s a waste of time. 2) Most people don’t seem to know what they want to get out of meetings like these. This clearly contributes to the rambling – there’s no focus because there’s no clear end point or goal. To speed things along a…
The Buzz about HiveLive
My friend John Kembal recently started a company – HiveLive – that facilitates communication between groups (friends, co-works, clubs, associations, etc.). The system looks like a social networking site, but allows you to upload more relevant information to your “Hive” and control better how you share it (i.e., its both a personal organization tool as well as a tool for communicating and sharing ideas across a group of people – kind of a cross between a blog, social network and wiki). They are in beta, but John has set up a site for VC Adventure readers to sign up – http://hivelive.com/join/vcadventure (click on the link and you’ll be taken to the sign-up page). You can e-mail me or John with…
TLAs
In a recent note Bill writes: I love your blog, but if you’re going to use TLAs (three letter acronyms), you need to spell out the first reference so the uneducated (like myself) know what you’re talking about. When you write about NOLs, us neophytes from Colorado think you’re talking about spending three days alone in the wilderness. 😉 He’s right. I sometimes forget how insular venture/finance/technology can be. In one of my very first ever business experiences – a training session at Morgan Stanley – I spent an hour listening to a Morgan associate (who happened to be the assignments associate from the group I was about to start working with) talk about the “Morgan way of doing DCF…
We’re losing control of the Internet
Two stories hit my desk today that serve as a stark reminder that the Internet as we know and love it is not guaranteed to continue on indefinitely. The first was the announcement that the Senate Commerce Committee split their vote on proposed compromise language on Net Neutrality (the idea that carriers should treat every packet on the internet the same). Plenty has been written on this subject so I won’t repeat the arguments here, but suffice it to say that the failure to guarantee neutrality on the net is a huge loss to anyone who cares about the future of the internet (and has a clue). The second was sent by my partner Greg Galanos via Brad and pointed to…
Are you a Yankee or a Rebel
NPR has the answer.
AppExchange is the new black
eBay jumped on the App Exchange bandwagon with an announcement from their development conference this weekend of a bunch of new APIs and development tools. This was a pretty broad announcement – Shoping.com, ProStores and even PayPal (who had traditionally been relatively closed) are participating in the effort – and expands their existing developer efforts significantly (see their developer site for more information). API’s are certainly nothing new – they are common ways for companies to allow access to their systems – but it seems to me that application exchanges are the new ‘it’ thing to do for platform companies (Salesforce.com, Google, eBay, etc.). This is a pretty new concept – companies in the past were extremely protective of their…
Should I quit my venture job?
Perhaps it’s just a sign of a bubble, but I’ve had several people (entrepreneurs, partners at venture firms and junior partners/senior associates) ask me in the past month whether I was thinking about leaving venture capital to join a company. Their thinking generally follows the logic that given the new Web 2.0 paradigm (presumably they mean the idea that you can build a net business relatively inexpensively, generate sometraffic and either cash flow it or sell it off) there’s a better chance to create wealth in the next 2-4 years by working on the operating side of the world than in venture capital. Given how difficult it is to land a job in venture capital (not to mention how…
What DON’T you do?
Companies – and start-ups in particular – spend a lot of time working through market analyses, product positioning and the like, trying to figure out how to tell the world what it is that they do (and differentiate that from what everyone else does). It is, of course, a very worthwhile and important effort. One thing few companies spend much time on, however, is the opposite question – what do you NOT do. Not the broad question of what you don’t do (we don’t make toasters is not very helpful), but focusing in on the gray areas between what you clearly do and clearly don’t do and deciding where you draw the line. I watch companies struggle over decisions (product extensions, sales targets,…
TypePad and Feedburner integration
Finally! FeedBurner and TypePad are now integrated. Before yesterday, if you had a TypePad blog (like mine) and burned your feed through FeedBurner you were only taking partial advantage of FeedBurner’s services (TypePad generates a number of feeds in different formats, and up to now, FeedBurner only captured one of these feeds). Not only will this give you a better view of your subscriber base and their behavior on your blog, but it will also allow TypePad bloggers to take full advantage of FeedBurners’s advertising and feed management services. You can read the FeedBurner announcement here and the SixApart announcement here (along with instructions on how to get your TypePad account fully integrated).