I was reminded (again) today of the importance of clear, open and honest communication. There’s no substitute for it. There seems to be a 1:10 rule about communication such that it takes about 10 times the amount of energy/effort to communicate something after the fact (i.e., after a communication break-down) than doing it up front. Not to mention the potential hard feelings, bad karma, etc. With all the ways to get in touch these days (e-mail, phone, cell phone, sms, etc.) it seems like this should be pretty easy. I’m as guilty as the next guy about forgetting this lesson. Perhaps writing it down here (and on a sticky on my computer screen) will help remind me. . .
Posts By / seth levine
Now I’m Really ‘Burned’
I’ve posted a few times about my desire for better users stats (most recently on April 1st but also way back in January). Well – now I’m doing something about it. FeedBurner announced today the closing of a new investment lead by Mobius (yours truly and Brad Feld – Brad will take the board seat and I will be the board observer), with new investor Sutter Hill and existing investors Portage and DFJ. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about the deal – Mobius’ third investment in the RSS/blogging space (FeedBurner joins Technorati and NewsGator as RSS/blogging related Mobius investments). While I’m hopeful that the new capital will solve some of the problems I’ve been having with my user statistics…
Burn me!
I complained a while back about how much the feed stats in TypePad suck. I then proceeded to do absolutely nothing about it, I guess figuring that site stats were something that would be high on their priority list and they would somehow figure it out. Well, they haven’t so I have a request to make. The basic problem I have with the TypePad stats is that they don’t provide me good data on who is subscribed to my feed. About a week into writing this blog I started using FeedBurner – which has much better information about who is reading my posts. The problem is that my FeedBurner stats only capture people who subscribed after that first week –…
A day in the life of a VC
One of the most common questions I get asked from people outside the VC industry is “what’s a typical day like?” It’s a good question, but a hard one to answer – my days are extremely varied (this is one of the things I really like about my job, in fact). The type of work I do on any given day is very dependant on what’s going on with the companies that I work with (financing, m&a, planning, putting in place a bank line, rolling out new products, etc.), and every day (or hour) seems to bring something different. I’ve tried a few approaches to answering this question – typically some variant of “on average I spend x% of my…
How do you view your news?
As an investor in an RSS aggregator (Newsgator – far and away the best of the reader platforms out there; although I suppose I’m biased) I pay attention to how people use syndication services and how they use, manage, manipulate and read their news and blog feeds. I’ve played around with some of the different technologies in the space – most of which are variations of the same theme (very effective for reading individual posts, not as effective for sorting through large amounts of information). Today Adam Rentschler sent me links (here and here) to a couple of sites that use RSS feeds (and a Google-like measure of what certain news sources are reporting on) to create a visual map…
Is this the future?
Is this what the future will look like? You tell me . .. http://oak.psych.gatech.edu/~epic/
On VC Suckage
Only hours away from posting a link to this great article by Paul Graham on why VCs suck (A Unified Theory of VC Suckage), when both Brad and Fred beat me to it. That didn’t keep me from sending the link directly to a couple of people who I thought would get a kick out of it (and wouldn’t necessarily see those blog entries). This list included my father – Randy Levine – who is the founder, initial CEO and now a director of a venture-backed start-up. Dad and I regularly trade stories about the relationships between VCs and their investors – comparing notes on our experiences from different sides of the table. Dad and I had the following exchange…
Moving right along
Fred Wilson had a great post recently on the problem of analysis paralysis. I completely agree. One of the challenges of business (and entrepreneurship) is that companies constantly have to make decisions based on incomplete information. That’s just part of the game. Successful entrepreneurs recognize that, take in as much information as makes sense, make a decision and then move on. While it’s helpful to look back at these decisions, I completely agree with Fred’s assertion that it’s not really fair to second guess them (although its important to learn from them). So, how do you avoid the analysis paralysis trap? Here are a couple of thoughts 1. on subjects that you are deeply familiar with, your first or gut…
Quova and geo-location in the news.
I’ve written a couple of posts in the past 2 months on the power of location (read them here and here). Quova – the leading player in the geo-location space – has had a couple of articles published about them in the past week that I wanted to pass along. I particularly like the article about how MLB is using the technology (not because it describes the origin of the Quova name – which I’m embarrassed to say that I never knew – but because it speaks to ways that companies are using geo-location information to create new and significant sources of revenue). Baseline – Major League Baseball Struggles to Reach Fans Online Bank Director – Keeping Online Banking Safe:…
Jarbarish
Fred Wilson has done a very amusing series of posts on VC Clichés (see the latest here) Terry Gold takes this to another level with what he has termed Jarbarish (a blend of jargon and gibberish). Here he posts an absolutely hilarious bit that he used at a recent company meeting. Thanks Terry for lightening the mood