Yahoo buying del.icio.us makes total sense. I have to admit that around the time Union Square invested in the company I didn’t really get it – I hadn’t understood the power of a user generated hierarchy. A few months ago I got a clue about it – late to the party, but at least there. Congrats to Fred, Brad and to the del.icio.us team – nice work!
Posts By / seth levine
The ultimate RSS reader
When I asked ealier this year how you view your news I didn’t exactly have this in mind, but now that I know it exists I can’t imagine any better way to stay informed. Yes – those are your RSS feeds being printed out on toliet paper. See the engadget link here. Thanks to Ross for sending this over.
Feed for Thought
They guys at FeedBurner (note: Mobius portfolio company) have put up a great post entitled Feed for Thought: How feeds will change the way content is distributed, valued and consumed. The article is a great read – very thoughtful about where RSS has come from and where its going. I was going to highlight a few points they made here, but the entire piece is a highlight and pulling stuff out won’t do it justice. Click over and read it.
Gobble Gobble
Last week a few of us played a little joke on our colleague Chris by putting a 6 foot tall inflatable lighted turkey in his driveway for him to find late one night as he came home. He returned the favor a few days later by leaving it on my desk (fully inflated) early one morning. See the pictures of what we’re now calling the ‘giant turkey’ below. All this spurred a few turkey haiku’s which I thought in the spirit of the season I’d share with you (these were authored by me, Chris, my wife Greeley and friend Laura): great turkey surprise oh where will you show up next in some neighbor’s yard gobble gobble great turkey arrives each…
M&A Part IV – Timing
When I worked at Morgan Stanley in the mid 90’s we used to have a joke about the relationship between VP hours and analyst hours. The ratio of these hours was in the neighborhood of 7 to 1, so when your VP asked you to do an analysis or create something for a pitch book and said something like “ok – I know its 10pm, but this should only take you about an hour” you knew that you’d working until about 5am, give or take. I’ve found this relationship to be true of many lawyers as well (as in “I’ll get you this document in a few hours,” which typically translates to “I’ll get you this document at 11:59pm tonight”)….
The downside of technology
Brad sent me an article a few days ago that described the very unplugged world of Warren Buffett (according to the article the most technologically advanced device he has in his office is a telephone, which he uses sparingly). It’s a pretty amazing read and reminded me of another article that was sent to me recently – this time by Dave Jilk – describing how technology is changing (negatively) the way people work (too distracted, shortening our attention span, ruining our vacations, etc.). Rather than rant about people using cell phones in restaurants or checking e-mail in meetings, I’ll relate a personal story that reminded me that it’s not the technology that’s to blame, of course, its how you use…
In your mind’s eye
I love the way the mind works. I spent years studying cognitive psychology, which was my college major (I was the psych geek who paid you $3 to sit in front of a computer for 10 minutes and take a test where what I told you I was testing for was not what I was testing for . . . ). My dad sent me the following link, which is pretty fun. http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html
Treat capital raising like a sales process
I’m involved in a lot of capital raising conversations – companies looking for money. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how narrow minded many companies are in how they approach this process. Forget the obvious stuff about doing research on local VC firms and their investment focus to make sure you are a match before sending them your “next generation toaster oven/microwave” business plan (yes – I actually received this plan) or targeting VCs that are particularly knowledgeable about your industry or have made money investing in businesses with similar characteristics – I’ll assume (wrongly) that most people already do that. I’m talking about treating interactions with potential funders as relationships – listening to what they have…
Getting to No
My wife and I live with a toddler and as a result are becoming more familiar with the concept of “NO” – which, incidentally, I can now assure you can contain anywhere between 1 and 5 syllables, depending on the desired effect and emphasis. It got me thinking about a VC pet peeve of mine which is how shitty a lot of VCs are at turning companies down. I’m not talking about the form e-mail that VCs send out to pass on something that they don’t want to take a look at (we all send out these e-mails, don’t we ?!?) – I’m talking about companies that we spend some amount of time with (say at least one meeting, but…
If I Only Knew
By all measures my “date” with Ben Casnocha was great (see my original post here, his here). As he points out, you skip a lot of the get-to-know you bs when you’ve had such rich interaction before actually getting together (particularly reading each others blogs, which really do provide nice insight and context). If you’ve ever read Ben’s blog, you already know that he’s light-years ahead of most high school students and remarkably well rounded and thoughtful. From the start this was all pretty apparent (he actually bought my coffee, which sounds like a small thing, but I can assure you probably wouldn’t have crossed my mind when I was in high school). We had a wonderfully wide ranging conversation…