November 2010
Thoughts about seed startups and their mobile app...
Over the weekend I read my friend Antonio Rodriguez’s post about the challenges of creating mobile apps in lean startups.
Antonio points out that’s is much harder for a seed funded company to build mobile apps today than startups that had only been focused on the web just a few years back:
“During the 2005 “everyone loves AJAX” era when I started Tabblo, front-end...
“Don’t let people tell you your ideas won’t work. I also went through...”
– Dennis Crowley via What are your top 5 pieces of advice for entrepreneurs? - Quora
Iron & Wine - Biting Your Tail
whoa. this is...
“I’ve taken to Twitter like a duck to water. Its simplicity allows the user to...”
– William Gibson, The Vulture Transcript: Sci-Fi Author William Gibson on Why He Loves Twitter, Thinks Facebook Is ‘Like a Mall,’ and Much More — Vulture
love this.
The Magnetic Fields - Strange Powers
newspeedwayboogie:
Alex Chilton - Anyway,...
Thanksgiving
This year has been intense to say the least.
Work has been on full speed since january - many new investments, several follow on rounds, seeing some of our portfolio companies come into their own, helping others get thru adolescence, a record breaking amount of traveling, learning from the pain of losing a few deals and raising our new third fund.
On the personal side it has been intense as...
fred-wilson:
Thanksgiving Day - Ray Davies -...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-11-21) →
Girl Talk (18)
M. Ward (11)
The Clash (3)
Jay Farrar & Benjamin Gibbard (3)
Jens Lekman (1)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Introducing Svpply
I am psyched to announce our latest investment — Svpply.
We have been using Svpply since it’s been in closed beta and it’s wonderful. It’s clean and all about sharing products that you love, want to buy or want to show others. My colleague Mo has a blog post all about the team and our thinking behind the investment.
You can follow my Svpply if you want here.
I’m...
Our wired kids
I read with great interest the lead story in NYT today - Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction.
The title of the article is pure link bait and doesn’t tell the entire story.
The article itself is a actually reasonably balanced and well written piece on our kids growing up in a world of always on connections, to each other and the web. It describes kids that send thousands of txt...
Jens Lekman & Tracey Thorn - Yeah! Oh Yeah!
A...
Mates Of State - California
“We’ve...
a chat with my kids in the car last sunday
sophia (age 11): hey, dad. do you know biz (founder of twitter).
me: yep. i do.
sophia: cool.
james (age 4): daddy, do you know Buzz. Buzz Lightyear?
me: no, sorry james. I don’t.
james: oh (w/ a look of disappointment)
A look back at the early days of Tumblr
Tumblr is getting a fair amount of attention these days.
During the past year, the growth has been quite significant. Last week Erick over at TechCrunch wrote about the growth and posted this graph.
It’s amazing and a pleasure having a front row seat to watch this team in action.
Fred wrote a post about this years Tumblr growth and as usual its a great one. Go read it if you...
Some thoughts on the Beatles and iTunes
Today Apple announced that the Beatles was coming to iTunes.
Apple made a huge event of out it and Steve Jobs gushed:
We love the Beatles and are honored and thrilled to welcome them to iTunes,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “It has been a long and winding road to get here. Thanks to the Beatles and EMI, we are now realizing a dream we’ve had since we launched iTunes ten years ago.”
I’m...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-11-14) →
The Shins (68)
Ben Kweller (20)
Girl Talk (20)
Shins, the (4)
Conor Oberst (2)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
The power of constraints
One of my favorite things about Twitter is the 140 character limit. It forces you to be brief and clear. It’s easy to create content and consume content on any device. Huge breakthrough.
Tumblr has a constraint too. You can upload one and only one song a day. So users take their time to choose something they cherish. As a result the music curation and community is a thing of joy on...
The Avett Brothers - November Blue
Board dynamics
We are typically early stage investors and we are active investors in our portfolio companies. In the 45 investments we’ve made since starting Spark, we have served on the board of every single company except for one company.
That’s one reason we do almost all of our investing in the United States. Of course, there are many amazing opportunities around the globe but it’s hard...
newspeedwayboogie:
Elvis Costello - Brilliant...
Watch@biz and @ev on Jimmy Fallon. Loved it.
“And to the haters- put up or shut up. You think you can do a better job building...”
– I read a piece from Forrester the other day that…
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-11-7) →
Yo La Tengo (22)
Bon Iver (14)
Kanye West Feat. Bon Iver (14)
The Bad Plus (4)
Kanye West ft. Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Bon Iver & Nicki Minaj (2)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr…
“Multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts? “I guess more than one Facebook...”
– Live from the Boxee Box launch event! — Engadget
avner cracks me up.
