September 2010
Does a small amount of capital lead to small...
For the past few years and it’s especially true this year, that there has been tremendous growth in the number of seed stage investments and the number of angels (people investing their own money) and VCs (people investing their own money *and* other people’s money)
We have been making seed investments since the earliest days at Spark. We take these seed investments very seriously....
newspeedwayboogie:
Bob Dylan - Don’t Think...
Homework
Each year of parenthood brings about new things to learn and figure out.
Right now it’s all about middle school.
Our oldest is 11 and she just started 6th grade. Her backpack is filled with more books than I could possibly imagine.
And the homework load is much bigger than I anticipated. Right now she’s getting about 2 hours of homework every day. Last night I asked on Twitter if...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-9-26) →
Eels (17)
Okkervil River (12)
Rhett Miller (8)
The Old 97s (4)
Roky Erickson w/ Okkervil River (3)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Do More Faster
Last year my friend Brad Feld told me he was writing a book based on the lessons learned from working with entrepreneurs and mentors in TechStars. I’ve been an investor and mentor since TechStars started here in Boston a few years ago. He asked me to contribute a section and I happily agreed.
The book is called Do More Faster and will be available in early October (you can pre-order as...
“Whether it’s tied to an entrepreneurial vision or simply made part of your...”
– Biz Stone: There Is Compound Interest in Altruism
Jer Coons - Love Vigilantes
Original by New...
Thank you, Marco.
When I first met David Karp he hadn’t yet launched Tumblr. He had a consulting company called Davidsville and Marco Arment became his co-pilot. They also built a bunch of cool things — they also created Tumblr back in 2007.
I started using the product right away and fell in love with it. At the time, Tumblr was inside of davidville. David and I spent a bunch of time together over the...
The Decemberists - Sunshine
My wish list for Android
I carry two phones. The iphone 4 is my primary phone and I carry a Verizon Blackberry when I need a reliable voice service in NYC and SF.
I’m giving Android another try. My brother is a huge Android fan and he showed me a bunch of great stuff on Android this past weekend that I was inspired to give it another try. So the Blackberry is back in the desk drawer.
There is a lot to love about...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-9-19) →
Ben Kweller (17)
Sufjan Stevens (14)
Kid Cudi (9)
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band (5)
Conor Oberst (5)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
“And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the...”
– Paul Krugman - The Angry Rich and Taxes - NYTimes.com
The Antlers - Bear
“i think we should be able to own numbers like we can own domain name”
– Fred Wilson
M. Ward - Stars of Leo
Sunday morning with M....
Should i drop out of school ?
Every so often I recieve an email from a student in high school or college asking me if they should drop out of school and start a company. I get a number of them every year and I just received another one this week.
I understand the question. Many great entrepreneurs left school to start building things and school wasn’t a good fit. It’s well known that the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates,...
Is it just me or has iOS become quite buggy?
I have been a loyal iphone user since the beginning.
I bought the very first one after standing in line forever with @nabeel
Then I bought the next one and the next one after that. And I bought the iphone4 this year. And I love this phone.
But it feels like iOS is getting heavy and buggy. Apps crash or do strange things. Even native apps. The mail app crashes on me once a week. Sometimes I...
“The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed...”
– Max Levchin, PayPal cofounder: FailCon: Failing Forward To Success : NPR
(saw this inspiring quote on my friend @nabeel’s facebook profile. can’t link to it but I’ll leave that topic for another day)
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-9-12) →
The Lemonheads (12)
Mumford & Sons (4)
The Antlers (2)
Belle and Sebastian (2)
Arctic Monkeys (1)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
If you like gadgets
Two of our portfolio companies made recent announcements that I thought I’d share.
Boxee Box
Boxee is a free application that you can download to your PC or Mac and brings the full internet experience - video, audio and photos to your television. And you can control the experience with a simple remote control or iPhone or iPod Touch.
Yesterday, Boxee along with one of their partners...
Vampire Weekend - I’m Going Down
lauren and...
May I help you? No thanks, just looking.
This happens all the time in physical stores.
Walk into a store and someone will kindly ask you? “May I help you?”
Sometimes the answer is yes because you have something in mind. but often it can be a simple, “no thanks, just looking” because you are in browse and discovery mode
I don’t know about you but the latter experience hasn’t made it over the web yet....
M. Ward - Color Of Water
sunday morning with m....
The iPod nano (touch)
On Friday, my new ipod nano arrived. I bought the silver one.
It’s really a marvel. So small and the screen is fun to tap and swipe. It’s a superior interface to that old click wheel that apple brought us so many years ago. And the battery life on the new nano seems to go on forever.
But I’m not sure I’m gonna keep it. Originally I thought i would use it for running...
Sunday Girl - Time to Pretend
Acoustic cover....
Fallin Slowly - (jay-z vs the swell season)
buy...
The second screen (continued)
Earlier this year, I wrote about the second screen.
I can’t get this opportunity out of my head. Probably because we use the second screen so much in our house.
But I think there are many opportunities to provide new second screen experiences that are completely different than things we already have at our finger tips. And mind you, I am hooked on the second screen already.
Just like...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-9-5) →
Arcade Fire (29)
Eels (9)
Ben Kweller (7)
Arctic Monkeys (7)
Archers of Loaf (1)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
WatchInterview with @ev, @jack and @biz in Dec 2006 when Twitter was operating inside of Obvious Corp
i smiled during the part when Jack talks about having 90 followers.
The big company vs a bootstrap
Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen some very large companies launch products that compete with products created by self funded startups.
Few notable examples:
Yesterday, Nike launched an iPhone app that no longer requires a separate sensor in your running shoes. The new app is a direct shot at RunKeeper.
A few weeks ago, Google lanched Priority Inbox which is a direct shot at...
The Antlers - Two
I love how this song builds.
The landline
I remember splurging and getting a second landline in our SF apartment about fifteen years ago.
I was working in Palo Alto so sometimes I would work at home in the morning hours to avoid traffic on the 101. And I wanted to have a different line than the one I had been sharing with Lauren.
We kept that second line until we moved to Boston. At that time, we ditched the 2nd line and just used...
