If you’re in the cloud you really need a parachute
NewImage.png Fred Wilson recently posted about his move to the cloud and the freedom that having his data always available has given him. More and more people and companies are freeing themselves from the constraints of desktop software and captive data stores in favor of cloud based applications and the freedom of readily (and always) available data. We recently went through a similar move at Foundry – although we haven’t completely moved to Google Apps for all of our documents and spreadsheets – and it’s been incredibly liberating. I blogged about my move to a Mac from a PC last year, but haven’t had a chance to follow that post up with a report on the more important move from a primarily client and desktop software based infrastructure to a cloud based one. …
May 25, 2011· 3 min read
Call List Manager – an app waiting to be born
I searched the app store recently for an app I was sure someone had come up with. But alas, no one had. So I thought I’d throw it out there in the hopes that someone wanted to take it on. Like many people I maintain a “to call” list. I do a lot of work over email, but I’m also on the phone anywhere between 5 and 12 hours a day and at any given moment I have a healthy list of people to get back to. I’ve tried different ways of managing this list – from putting them in as calendar reminders (works to create the list, but it’s not persistent enough) to using tasks (this has been the best option, although still lacking) to writing myself emails with lists of people I need to call back (this works for specific situations, but I need to refresh the email once I’ve actually connected with a portion of my list; plus its kluge). Add to this that I’m often running through calls while driving, which brings with it its own challenges of accessing these lists and their associated numbers (and what if I need to remind myself of context and have to look through emails or a calendar entry to find it?). Like everyone reading this, I’m an above average driver, but despite that it’s still not the best way to work while getting from point to point. …
May 12, 2011· 3 min read
Getting to know you
demographics.png You already know a lot about you. But I don’t. I sit at this end of the internets and type our posts on topics that I hope you’ll find interesting. And some portion of you tweet out links to posts that you like. And a smaller portion of you either comment on a post I’ve written or send me an email with your thoughts (all of these things – from just reading to any level of engagement – I appreciate!). But I don’t know a whole lot about you in aggregate. I use Google Analytics on the site which lets me see a little bit about where you come from to get to my site (and where you go after you’re done) but the information available is pretty basic. …
May 11, 2011· 2 min read
Your idea is overrated
I’m not going to rehash the “why I don’t sign NDAs” stuff that I’ve written about in the past (here it is if you want to see it), but being asked a few times this week to sign NDAs has gotten me thinking about the value of ideas. Actually, this is something I’ve recently been noodling on and my conclusion is that people 1) overvalue their idea on the front end of a project and 2) once something has become successful undervalue the day-to-day tactical execution that made the idea successful. …
May 5, 2011· 3 min read
The evolution of Gluecon
I was thinking about the evolution of our Glue conference as I drove into work this morning. It’s pretty remarkable how much the infrastructure ecosystem – and therefore our little conference that focuses on it – has changed since we ran our first Gluecon in 2009. The initial premise for Glue was to get together to have a detailed conversation about the technologies that were underlying the trend of the web as a platform (web-as-a-service). And while there was plenty of talk about “cloud” at the time we were talking about it as somewhat of a parallel universe to “web” that connected at very specific end points. And when it came to applications, since “web” was the end point when we said “application” we meant “web application”. And it was pretty clear what was a business application and what was a consumer application and the venn diagram intersection between the two wasn’t particularly meaningful. …
April 19, 2011· 3 min read
Don’t call it AdTech. It’s “Adhesive”
For about the past year my partners have been pushing me to write up some thoughts on AdTech investing. “We’re not AdTech investors,” I’d push back, “we just have a bunch of companies in the portfolio that are working in and around online advertising.” And for a while that worked pretty well. Most of our AdTech investments would be labeled “glue” (they were all connecting or intermediary technologies – just applied to online advertising). Then Jason came up with the name “Adhesive” which seemed to stick (that was bad, wasn’t it) and after a few months procrastinating I ended up writing up our thoughts on AdTech investing and posted them today over on the Foundry blog. And while I really don’t consider myself and “AdTech” investor, I suppose that thee who protests too much… …
April 12, 2011· 5 min read
Do less slower
NewImage.png I’m sure you’ve read David Cohen and Brad Feld’s book Do More Faster. And while I thought the book was full of great advice for entrepreneurs (and I’m incredibly proud of David and Brad for writing it, if admittedly, having heard the moniker of the title oft repeated a few too many times – see here for my partner Jason’s clever tease of them with some help of Xtranormal) I actually think sometimes the best thing a startup can do is to do the opposite of what the book’s title suggests (although some of the inside chapters do not) and Do Less Slower instead. …
April 6, 2011· 2 min read
Beware of the volume of your CEO megaphone
Someone used this phrase with me a few days ago and I thought it effectively captured something that’s come up a number of times in the past few weeks around CEO communication. Many great entrepreneur CEOs are fantastic visionaries and seem to have a constant (often what feels like endless!) stream of ideas flowing from their brains. And because they’re often gregarious people they’re not shy about sharing this idea stream. However often this idea flow isn’t accompanied by any metadata and the lack of context can sometimes lead to companies zig zagging around as managers react to the most recent meeting they’ve had with their visionary boss. Enter the comment about the “CEO Megaphone” and I think we’ve found an apt description to what sometimes goes on within a company. When CEO’s talk, their voice is amplified by their position in the company (always as the boss and sometimes as the boss and company founder – which can amplify the weight of their voice, especially around product direction, even more). Since a CEO can’t turn off the megaphone, it’s important that s/he recognize the amplification effect it has.
April 4, 2011· 1 min read
Ok Color. How about solving the more basic (and important) problem with photos?
NewImage.png Ever hear of this start-up called Color? They launched a social photo sharing thing yesterday. And raised $41M. Oh wait. Everyone has heard of Color by now (and has an opinion about it; re: their capital raise, I’d refer you to a recent post on that subject) What I want to talk here isn’t the Color business, the financing or how much it paid for Color.com. It seems to me that this most basic problem with photos hasn’t come close to being solved yet. And while I don’t have a strong opinion around what Color is doing (although with age, I fear that I’m finding that many of these types of apps don’t much appeal to me personally) the hype around it did make me wonder why no one has yet figured out an answer to this much larger and more interesting problem: …
March 24, 2011· 3 min read
Have less funding than your competitors? Good!
NewImage.png I’ve sometimes joked with companies in our portfolio that the best way to deal with a better funded competitor is to use their own relative lack of funding to their strategic advantage. But actually, this solution isn’t meant tongue-in-cheek – I’m being dead serious. While we have a few companies in the portfolio that have, for various reasons, raised significant amounts of capital, many of the businesses in which we have invested haven’t. Not only are they reasonably capital efficient measured alone, but when compared with their peers, a number have raised far less capital than companies with which they compete. …
March 17, 2011· 2 min read