June 2011
“Sometimes in life you meet people that inspire you. Sometimes you meet people...”
– @jamieoliver
lauren showed me a clip tonight of Jamie Oliver getting shut out of a public school as he was trying to help them see the garbage they feed kids. It was utterly depressing and made me sick.
He summed it up with this quote and I had to write it down.
May 2011
Noah and the Whale - Blue Skies
Bon Iver - Can’t Make You Love Me (Live On...
tazrover asked: Do you have any advice on how to avoid common mistakes when accepting seed capital from friends/family? I'm a first-time entrepreneur and would very much appreciate your input.
Thoughts on 20 Under 20
When I graduated from college, nearly 20 years ago, startups and big companies alike cared a great deal about where you went to school. Countless employers asked me about GPA. Later VCs asked me where I went to school. That was my perception at the time and that perception remained for many years after I graduated.
Thankfully time is changing all of that. Since we started Spark, I’m pretty...
Sorry for the radio silence
The downside of being in “mobile only” mode lately (ie not having my MacBook Air on my travels) is the inability to share music.
So my tumblr has been a bit quiet of late. I’ll do a better job at putting new songs in my Tumblr Queue before my next trip.
Mobile Only
My friend @fredwilson wrote a series of great posts called “Mobile first, web second”. It’s a critical topic and something that we often talk about with our portfolio companies.
Here’s a link to the most recent one Fred wrote on the subject
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/mobile-first-web-second-continued.html
The other important thing many of us experience these days are not only mobile...
“Startup fundraising isn’t about convincing skeptics but rather finding...”
– @leehower on linkedin series A financing, http://t.co/14jFUJU (via @Jess)
Arctic Monkeys - Piledriver Waltz (acoustic)
alex...
Inside rounds
Historically it’s always been a weak signal when a VC backed startup needs to raise money from the inside investors, aka as the inside round. But I never understood why. If the current investors love the company, they should keep investing as the company grows. Why do they need outside validation?
Back in 2009, I wrote about inside rounds and my take at the time was that conventional wisdom...
“You’re only taking the first ten employees, so by June of 1977, we were at...”
– EXCLUSIVE: Interview With Apple’s First CEO Michael Scott
“The second half of this album is as glorious a set of songs on any record...”
– was just saying this to @bijan earlier this morning
Arctic Monkeys – Suck It And See (Review) | M Is For Music.
(via fred-wilson)
Wanna be an angel investor ?
Jon Pierce has organized Angel Bootcamp which takes place June 14th in Cambridge - the day before TechStars Demo day.
Angel Bootcamp is intended to help those that are interested in becoming an angel investor. Angel investors are a critical part of any healthy startup ecosystem and I’d love to see it get even stronger in Boston and Cambridge
So please attend if this is of interest to you...
Morning chat with @jamessabet, age 5
james: daddy, its gonna be super hot today. you should wear shorts.
me: I’d love to but I cant today. I have a meeting.
james: you should be a lifeguard
A tip for all CEOs: do you have to attend that...
Yesterday we had our first Founder Summit in NYC. We gathered over 50 founders and CEOs together to provide learnings and lessons on a variety of shared topics.
I want to thank all that attended and participated.
We also had a few guest speakers come in. Ray Ozzie gave a talk about his passion & insight about social and mobile. And it was super cool to hear about his experiences on one of...
“On Tuesday, Senate Republicans…managed to filibuster an effort to eliminate $21...”
– Ezra Klein (via technipol)
The real time vs the later web
Much has been written about the power of the real time web. it’s particularly powerful in a social and mobile context. I’m writing this post on my iPhone so I can’t link to it but i recall a great post by my friend john Borthwick on the realtime web that is worth re reading. I’ll add a link later.
But this post is about the later web. Like a DVR for the internet a number of services have emerged...
davehyndman:
Bon Iver - Calgary
New Bon Iver....
“We were able to notify displaced patients via Twitter on where to acquire...”
– BBC News - Twitter ‘vital’ link to patients, say doctors in Japan
Arctic Monkeys - Reckless Serenade
my favorite...
“But I have zero experience or expertise in building a company. I’ve never worked...”
– Varsity Bookmarking My Job Pt.1 — I have no idea what I’m doing
We have backed a number of first time founders. Ben has self awareness that extremely quite unique. (disclosure: we are investors in Ben’s company, Svpply).
“If they [big companies] can’t succeed at it, I don’t think three kids in a...”
– Who’s Afraid of Instagram? Not Shutterfly: Tech News and Analysis «
There are so many disturbing things about this sentence. i couldn’t disagree more with Shutterfly’s CEO on this topic.
The Shins - Taste of Cindy
A Jesus and Mary...
Blitzen Trapper - Maybe Baby
a single from this...
“Why are we listening to the Bush administration people anyway? They didn’t GET...”
– JON STEWART, on former Bush administration figures taking credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden, on The Daily Show (via inothernews)
Comparing Tumblr to Wordpress
Yesterday, I received a few emails linking to this post on Pingdom that describes the growth of Wordpress and the faster growth of Tumblr (disclosure: I’m a board member and investor in Tumblr).
But comparing Tumblr to Wordpress is like comparing apples and oranges. They are completely different things.
Wordpress is a publishing platform. You can host it yourself or Wordpress it will host...
Shout Out Louds - My Friend and The Ink on His...
Anonymous asked: Do you hold office hours or is there a startup event in Boston that you would be attending in the near future? Would prefer to come by and introduce myself and then chat/email about our venture rather than just send a cold email.
Anonymous asked: I just folded my last venture and looking to start again fresh. What do you think is a better approach when assessing ideas/opportunities to pursue: top down (pickingg a market/industry and finding the gaps) or bottom up (finding a problem and then working your way up)?
headunderwater asked: what is your favorite album of 2011 so far?
The Strokes - I’ll Try Anything Once
love...
Loving Instagram
A few months ago I discovered Hipstamatic. For those that aren’t yet familiar, Hipstamatic allows you to add cool filters to your iPhone camera
Once you do that, you can do all sorts of things with that photo like share on twitter, Flickr.
But then a few weeks back I started using Instagram. And I’m completely smitten.
The thing about Instagram that I love is that it’s a mobile social network...
Shared startup experiences
There are times where I wish I could bring the CEO of one startup to another startup’s board meeting.
It would be interesting to get their reaction and input to shared pain when it comes to hiring challenges, scaling challenges, lost deals, product delays or revenue misses. Also, they could see the joy when a team is crushing it and a company healthy and in a groove. And they would know...
The Cure vs The Commodores (mashup)
how great is...
The Monster In Your Head » Work-Life Balance is... →
Loved Jerry’s latest post:
In our vain effort to assuage the guilt of not being at the other end of work-life seesaw (regardless of which end we find ourselves on), we end up neither here nor there. Remember running back and forth on the seesaw trying to stand legs apart in the center, one foot in each world, getting both ends to balance? I remember the nasty bump I got in that vain...
Arctic Monkeys - Don’t Sit Down Cause...