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 analysis” all the while thinking “I’m totally screwed. There are 100 people in this room and I’m the only one who has absolutely no clue what DCF stands for, let alone whatever subtlety he’s talking about that is the ‘Morgan way’.” (Turns out DCF stands for discounted cash flow analysis – something I have gotten intimately familiar with over the years). …
July 6, 2006· 1 min read
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 the Wired blog post on how to detect whether your net traffic is being sniffed by the government. It highlights an analysis done by the EFF that concludes that the allegations of AT&T secret surveillance rooms are likely valid, that the program covers domestic traffic, not just international traffic and that the system is capable of looking at content, not just addresses. You can read the full EFF report here (its been redacted by the government for security purposes). …
June 29, 2006· 2 min read
Are you a Yankee or a Rebel
NPR has the answer.
June 20, 2006· 1 min read
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 platforms and wanted to control almost every aspect of access to their systems (in this paradigm “open system” often meant ‘we’ll let you use our proprietary scripting engine to ‘develop’ to our platform). Companies have loosened this view in more years and moved to more open API’s (sometimes through a developer program; more recently completely open to anyone who wants to access them). The AppExchange idea is the next logical extension of this (the “Web 2.0 model for development”, if you will) and makes perfect sense: open your system, give support and help to those that want to develop extensions to it and give them a single home where users of your software can find these extensions. Its free development work, makes your platform that much more powerful and provides a nice sourcing ground for potential acquisitions. …
June 13, 2006· 2 min read
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 fun the work is), it may sound strange that people are even considering this, but in the course of these conversations a number of examples always come up of sr. associate/vp/principal level colleagues who have jumped ship for what is perceived to be the greener pastures of the company side of the fence. …
June 9, 2006· 2 min read
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, delivery methods, etc.) or get slowly pulled off track as they chase down revenue and partner opportunities that are just a little bit off track (enough to reap havoc across an engineering or delivery organization, but not enough to be clearly out of bounds). Have the conversation first – know what’s in bounds and what’s out of bounds and how to tell the difference.
June 8, 2006· 1 min read
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. …
June 8, 2006· 1 min read
Syndicate NYC Thoughts
Here are a couple of high level thoughts on the Syndicate Conference held a few weeks ago in New York (ok – I’m weeks late getting this up, but the next Syndicate conference isn’t for another 6 months, so from that perspective I’m early!). First – Here’s the conference website Next – Here’s IDG’s marketing spin post conference (which does highlight some of the announcements that came out of the week) Finally – Here’s the conference blog site My quick 3 take-away’s were as follows: …
June 5, 2006· 1 min read
What makes a great start-up market?
Here’s one take on that ubiquitous question (ubiquitous at least for those of us who live outside of the bay area). The simple answer is Nerds and Money, but the more complex answer is much more amusing. Link – http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html
May 31, 2006· 1 min read
Its just technology – comments
Andy had a good comment to my “its just technology” post, which I’ve been meaning to pull up to the front page. Here it is: I think this is a wider issue. I believe that most, if not all, early stage high tech companies suffer from the “what it is” versus “what it does” disease when selling their products. Only the early adopter prospect who “gets it” will respond to this sales approach. Many prospects that should be great targets may get excited about the hot technology but won’t understand how it benefits them or solves any problem they care about. They will relegate the offering to “nice to have” and won’t buy – often after pulling the salesperson through a several months-long sales cycle. I think this failure to move from product-centric to customer-business-problem-centric underlies the problem getting sales traction that a lot of new companies have – even though they are selling great technology. So, it’s a survival issue not only for new technologies but for the companies that develop them.
May 12, 2006· 1 min read