The 6 / 50 rule of internet advertising
comScore and behavioral ad network Tacoda released a study last month that caught my eye. It at least partially answers the question that I’m sure most regular internet users have asked themselves at one time or another: “who the heck actually clicks on these banner ads anyway?!?". Turns out that about 6% of users are “heavy clickers” in the study’s parlance. These users generate about 50% of the total banner clicks. The study points out that these users are heavily skewing banner click-through data. They are also not representative of the overall internet population (heavy clickers according to the study are between the ages of 25 and 44 with household incomes less than $40k; they spend a lot of time on-line, but they don’t tend to spend a whole lot more than other users online – their clicking behavior isn’t indicative of spending behavior).Its worth taking a read of the press release which summarized the findings from their work – fascinating. …
March 13, 2008· 2 min read
The bird is cold
Yahoo launched a private version of what they are calling FireEagle – a service that allows you to track your location to be shared with applications that build to the FireEagle API – its basically a location “broker” (for self reported location). I’m a big fan of location based services (we’re investors of IP geo-information company Quova and geo-spatial platform company deCarta), so the idea of a common platform upon which to build location aware applications. Through Quova, we’re small investors in Navizon who has a similar dev platform to FireEagle. …
March 6, 2008· 2 min read
Finding your technical founder
I hear a version of this question a lot (like the one below today from Dawn): I talked to a firm that really likes my business plan but thinks I should have a technical co-founder. SIGH Any ideas how I could find a really good tech guy, preferably with some cache??? While not every business needs a technical co-founder, many (most) benefit from some early technical vision that is unlikely to be provided by the business founder. So where do you find these people that can code, help refine your technical vision and check the technical cache box? Here are a couple of ideas. …
March 4, 2008· 3 min read
Taking a break once in a while
If you’ve at all been trying to unplug once in a while – as I have been to mixed success, you’ll enjoy this article from last Sunday’s NY Times.
March 4, 2008· 1 min read
To stealth or not to stealth
We’ve announced four initial Foundry investments (Lijit, Memeo, Oblong and Zynga) – in press releases by the companies, on our personal blogs or on the new Foundry web site. Truth be told, we’ve made a fifth investment which we’re not talking about much. That’s because it’s in “stealth” mode (shhhh). There are varying degrees of stealth, ranging from companies that won’t tell anyone what they are up to, to companies (like the one I’m referring to)that don’t have a web site and haven’t made any announcement of their business intentions or funding but aren’t hiding what they are doing in daily industry conversations, etc. This stands in stark contrast to companies (such as Path 101), which are all buy live blogging their board meetings and actively talking about their product and development plans. …
February 26, 2008· 3 min read
Love revisited
I don’t write much about my kids on this blog – a little too personal and ultimately my wife and I think they should decide what and when they want to share online. I couldn’t resist this one, however. A few years ago I wrote about my own overwhelming feelings of love for my kids. Its great when they can return the sentiment! Below is a note from my 4 year old daughter. My wife helped her with the spelling, but she drew all the letters and picked the words herself. …
February 25, 2008· 1 min read
And then there was Foundry . . .
There are a couple of very key dates in the history of Foundry Group. The day when Brad, Chris, Jason, Ryan and I actually formed the legal entity that is Foundry . . . the day last fall of the first close on our first fund, Foundry Venture Capital 2007 . . . the day shortly thereafter when we held our final close of that fund . . . and today – the day we’re launching a real web site. www.foundrygroup.com is now up and running and is much improved from the brochure-ware site we had as a stand-in during fundraising. …
February 25, 2008· 2 min read
The power paradox
Dacher Keltner (Psychology prof at Cal) has written a fascinating article that describes some of the important attributes of leaders. He discusses these attributes in the context of obtaining and maintaining “power” – really leadership if you’re reading the article from the eyes of a VC or entrepreneur. The title of his article refers to the fact that the attributes necessary to obtain positions of power and leadership are the very attributes that tend to be eroded by those positions themselves (i.e., once people obtain power, they tend to lose it by acting in a way that is antithetical to the reason they rose to that position in the first place). …
February 21, 2008· 3 min read
I dropped my cholesterol 70 points in two weeks
This post is going to sound like an infomercial except this is 100% true and I’m not trying to sell you anything. About 8 months ago my doctor told me that I had high cholesterol (242 in total) and that it needed to come down or he wanted to put me on a statin (Lipitor, or something like that). Apparently cholesterol runs in my family (my dad and sister both have high cholesterol) and despite eating pretty well and being in descent shape, mine was high too. …
February 20, 2008· 3 min read
vc ware
In case you’re looking for this season’s latest VC styles. Note that Brad’s “treadputer” made the cut. Hat tip to Jason for sending this over
February 20, 2008· 1 min read