tgoss

The future of Wired on the iPad looks pretty awesome. Looks...

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:50:10 -0800

The future of Wired on the iPad looks pretty awesome. Looks like they took a few hints from the concept video that Bonnier put out a few months ago.

Tumblr's Retention Rate Beats Twitter

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:00:31 -0800

Tumblr's Retention Rate Beats Twitter:

evangotlib:

soupsoup:

Tumblr has a retention rate of 85% - unlike Twitter’s 40-50%

Granted this is damage control and likely mandated by the NBA...

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:31:06 -0800

Granted this is damage control and likely mandated by the NBA and/or Washington Wizards and/or Arenas’ agent and/or his shoe sponsor, BUT it still takes a lot to stand up and apologize personally in a very public venue such as the Washington Post. Good Job Gilbert.

This is what I want… a portable desktop speakerphone...

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:40:02 -0800

This is what I want… a portable desktop speakerphone running google voice over VOIP or 3G Voice.

anyone?

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:57:49 -0800

anyone?

this is just too funny… I’m almost wondering if this...

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:24:40 -0800

this is just too funny… I’m almost wondering if this name was a last second change after Ballmer announced that MSFT would be running on a number of “slate” pc’s. The name seems like an odd miss for Apple. I would’ve gone with iBook, especially since one of the primary use cases is for reading.

Its not the size of your market, its what you do with it that matters.

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:26:21 -0800

brycedotvc:

One of the most pedestrain of questions that arise in many VC meetings is that of market size. How big is your market? Really. I’ve found that should this question arise more than once over a series of meetings, you’re better off looking elsewhere for funding than the blue shirt and khaki MBA staring at you pointedly from across the table.

If history is a guide you will not be able to answer this question with cleverly constructed Excel spreadsheets or elegantly cascading waterfall projections. For seed and early stage investors I’ve found that you either fundamentally and instinctively believe that something is a big market or you don’t. Because, often, the most interesting companies are operating in as-yet-undefined markets or are attacking and existing market from some niche that the large incumbents dismiss as not being big enough to warrant their attention and resources.

I posted a link a graph sizing the mobile ad market today at $215M. Now, most VCs say they won’t even look at markets that aren’t well north of a billion dollars in size. Also note that AdMob was funded pre-iPhone which seems to be making mobile ad networks a more reasonable bet. That market barely exists today and was even less obvious for the VCs who wrote the original checks to back a company in an undefined and, wait for it, small market.

The same could be said of the VCs who wrote the first checks for Facebook (social graph, wha?), Twitter (no, what you doing?) Zynga (a niche inside a niche) and many others.

Of the two new investments I made last year, I believe the current market sizing for each would be some approximation of zero. And that’s the point. Its not about the size of today’s market its what you do with it that really matters.

My seatmate at the bar… He prefers draft over bottles

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:14:02 -0800

My seatmate at the bar… He prefers draft over bottles

Photo

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:15:16 -0800

"The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of..."

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:43:54 -0800

““The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.””

- Jessica Hische

hiten: KILL a Feature Every Week. (via davemc500hats)

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:14:53 -0800

hiten:

KILL a Feature Every Week. (via davemc500hats)

The Dems can try to spin this however they...

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:15:00 -0800

The Dems can try to spin this however they want….

…but they just got shellacked In the closest thing we’ve had to a national referendum of the government thus far.

“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The Dems have had absolute power for a full year. They control the White House and both houses in Congress, even with a filibuster proof majority (until today). With all that power, support (even some from me *gasp*), and a lot of political capital following Obama’s historic win, they moved their agenda so far to the left that they’ve completely lost touch with reality… and apparently the voters in Massachusetts!

It really is tragic because a lot of the ideas Obama talked about in the campaign—including more transparency in Government— were good ones. But good ideas are not enough. Good ideas need to be backed up with determined action and sound implementation. I hate to say it but Obama has failed to live up to a lot of the promises he made on the campaign. The most glaring example is that he has begun to defer on key issues to his party’s leadership on Capitol Hill (you know who I mean) to define agenda, and the definition they’ve come up with has alienated a lot of people. For a President with such political power as he has, this is entirely ridiculous. Obama better get his house in order… fast.

Perhaps this Republican win will shake things up on Capitol Hill and finally convince the Democrats that the American people are unhappy with them. Very unhappy with them! This is not what we voted for, and if they want to avoid getting hosed in the next round of elections they had better get their act together real quick.

"It’s not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess;..."

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:30:43 -0800

“It’s not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess; it’s that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse’s office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.”

- Jon Stewart (video here… skip to the 9:00 mark)

NYT and others charging for content?

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:01:49 -0800

I’ll be frank… I really don’t think media companies charging for content is the way to go. Let’s look at why:

One of the things that made iTunes and other music download services great is that they allowed people to purchase an individual song as opposed to an entire record. People don’t mind paying for something they value, but they don’t like paying for other stuff they don’t value. Up until that point, consumers had to “take the good with the bad” and so many either begrudgingly bought the album just for a single song, while others passed on the album even though they wanted a song on it.

Another thing that made iTunes a success was that Steve Jobs (correctly) estimated that the hassle factor of illegally downloading a song was more expensive then a song priced at $0.99. And he was right. The iTunes model has proven definitively that most people are willing to pay a small amount of money for something of value, even when free versions exist, if the paid version is more convenient/fun to own. With news content, the free version is the norm not the exception, and the convenience/fun factor is missing from the ownership experience. As such, it’s unlikely that people would be willing to pay for content since it’s likely available for free elsewhere without much hassle.

In order to change this reality, the news companies are going to have to develop differentiated content. CBS’ 60 Minutes is a good example of this idea as their content and investigative journalism style is unique among news sources. The more that news companies can differentiate themselves in similar fashion, the more they’ll have the ability to charge for content. Barring that, I predict that most paid models will not ultimately succeed.

Why Windows Mobile 7 might actually matter

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:53:53 -0800

Why Windows Mobile 7 might actually matter:

It’s not often that I offer praise upon Redmond’s strategic efforts, but this one is indeed praise-worthy. For some time, Microsoft has been decidedly absent from the smart phone conversation. Yes, Steve Balmer will contest that they ship their WinMo OS’s on a gazillion handsets each year, but the perception is that Microsoft has missed this wave, and much of that perception stems from the minimal innovation coming out of Redmond in the smartphone OS category. Hopefully that is about to change, and if the tipster quoted in this article is to be believed, this is one of the ballsiest moves by Microsoft in some time.

Such a move is not without recent precedent for Microsoft. For years, they got their hat handed to them in search by Google. It was only when they took some risks and started thinking and acting more like a startup did the market take notice. By all accounts Bing is a solid entry in the search category and is the first real compeition Google has faced in some time. That’s a good thing. I love Google, but competition will always be a win for consumers.

As for SmartPhones, Microsoft has avoided risk for many years, being content with releasing new mobile operating systems that were at best a marginal improvement over the previous version. Apparently, that’s about to change and I for one am a fan. I love my iPhone, but I don’t love it because Apple makes it. I love it because Apple is a company that never seems content with anything they’ve built, and is constantly pushing the envelope of what’s possible. If Microsoft could rediscover that element of their own DNA, we’d all be a lot better off and competition between Mac and PC would be even more interesting.

hiten: seth godin_people donÂ´t buy what they need (via One...

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:32:52 -0800

hiten:

seth godin_people donÂ´t buy what they need (via One Trick Pony in FlickR)

catharsis: WiFi for passive-aggressives (via Gizmodo) Awesome!

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:12:52 -0800

catharsis:

WiFi for passive-aggressives (via Gizmodo)

Awesome!

"The key is not the “will to win” - everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is..."

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:12:49 -0800

“The key is not the “will to win” - everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.”

- Bobby Knight (Retired American basketball coach. Knight head coached three NCAA national championship basketball teams. He has also won 902 games in men’s NCAA Div. I basketball, more than any other coach in history.) (via freethrows) (via steve-thesportsguyz)

bijan: At the boxee board meeting. The Boxee Box!

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:51:24 -0800

bijan:

At the boxee board meeting.

The Boxee Box!

"The problem is that you can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones."

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:23:55 -0800

“The problem is that you can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.”

- Seth’s Blog: Fear of bad ideas (via hiten)