Bijan Sabet

just ordered this bluetooth headset for working out. high hopes...

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:03:27 -0400

just ordered this bluetooth headset for working out. high hopes - they look great.

newspeedwayboogie: this is the song of the day for me. The new...

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:12:12 -0400

this is the song of the day for me. The new song sounds even gentler than his previous work, which was already quite gentle. His voice has an even better timbre and the instrumentation has more texture. Wonderful

whitneymcn:

The Tallest Man On Earth - 1904

There’s a new TMOE record this summer; all is well.

Yes!

“Hallway Chat”, #6 @nabeel and I discuss/debate...

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:52:00 -0400

“Hallway Chat”, #6

@nabeel and I discuss/debate Facebook Opengraph, my new Android phone, Nabeel’s latest take on Picturelife and Wunderlist

Click here for previous episodes.

Big syndicates for consumer seed rounds but not capital intensive ideas?

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:28:00 -0400

We have seen a ton of seed rounds completed over the last 24 months where the start up raises less than $2M of initial financing and has sometimes 4 (or more!) traditional venture firms participating plus a half dozen angels (or more!) in the same round.

Many smart folks have commented on that strategy and whether that is a good idea of traditional venture firms or entrepreneurs. For this post, I’m not going to comment on that topic (1)

But contrast that to the capital intensive investment opportunities. We are often asked to evaluate a Series A round of a capital intensive idea where the company needs to raise $5-$10M before knowing any real data. Those investments are challenging for a whole host of reasons.

In our partner mtg last week I brought up the idea/question: why can’t we have large syndicates for seed/Series A in capital intensive ideas? I think we should and my partner Santo wrote up a good post today explaining the logic.

I’d much rather see 4 VCs funding a capital intensive idea than 4 VC funding a capital efficient seed round.

And hopefully we can together fund some crazy bat shit ideas along the way that take years to figure out.

* * *

(1) OK, I can’t help myself. i don’t like to see more than 2 VCs in a seed round. The important thing for the lead VC and the founder to agree on is how much capital is required. Stage the capital properly and pick angels that will help. And choose VCs that have a track record of leading/following on their seed investments. Ask them specifically what their history looks like with seed investing and follow on. The answer will be quite revealing.

New Order - Regret shared from exfm

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:07:00 -0400

New Order - Regret

shared from exfm

A weeks view of my Nike Fuelband data. Clearly need to add more...

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:21:26 -0400

A weeks view of my Nike Fuelband data. Clearly need to add more activity early in the week.

Don’t let the innocent look fool you. He’s got a...

Sun, 13 May 2012 18:47:11 -0400

Don’t let the innocent look fool you. He’s got a mean first serve

Wi-Fi Calling

Sun, 13 May 2012 10:33:53 -0400

In our house, cellular coverage is a big problem.

Basically I can only get coverage if I’m in a few rooms at best. The vast majority of my inbound calls go to voicemail. (Maybe that’s a feature not a bug - especially on weekends!) My primary mobile phone is an iPhone on Verizon’s network.

I’m a Google Voice user but I don’t want work calls routed to my home number. That would drive my wife crazy.

I’ve tried various micro-cells over the years and they don’t work for me either.

A few weeks ago I picked up a HTC One S. It’s a beautiful Android phone. I love it. Best Android powered hardware I’ve ever touched. I use the One S and my iphone 4s interchangeably. The only app I miss on the Android is Hipstamatic.

My absolute favorite feature on the One S is Wi-Fi calling. Basically when my phone connects to our home wifi network it automatically turns the cellular network off and I can make & receive calls with my own number over Wi-Fi.

I realize that this is an old feature to many of you t-mo users out there. But I can tell my fellow VZW and ATT friends, this feature is amazing. It just works.

The Morning Benders - Mother And Child Reunion (Paul Simon...

Sun, 13 May 2012 07:41:00 -0400

The Morning Benders - Mother And Child Reunion (Paul Simon Cover)

Happy Mother’s day to all the great moms out there.

shared from exfm

Ellie had back to back games today. I love watching her...

Sat, 12 May 2012 16:59:00 -0400

Ellie had back to back games today. I love watching her play.

(Canon 7d, 1/500 sec, f/4.0, 140mm, ISO 100)

Bluish (Animal Collective cover) by Sondre Lerche shared from...

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:47:00 -0400

Bluish (Animal Collective cover) by Sondre Lerche

shared from exfm

I love Marco’s latest release notes for the instapaper...

Thu, 10 May 2012 06:26:32 -0400

I love Marco’s latest release notes for the instapaper update

via barackobama: “Same-sex couples should be able to get married.”—President Obama Yes we can.

Thu, 10 May 2012 05:35:00 -0400

via barackobama:

“Same-sex couples should be able to get married.”—President Obama

Yes we can.

Is 20k installs per day the new norm?

Wed, 09 May 2012 08:38:00 -0400

Thanks to the combination of smartphone proliferation, the app store distribution model, FB Open Graph integration and Twitter, we are seeing mobile apps reach incredible metrics very fast - particularly in daily installs and sign ups.

It’s has me thinking about a number of things:

FB Open Graph integration is clearly paying off for developers. My worry is how long it lasts, namely, Facebook can change the rules of the road anytime they want. When I was on the board at OMGPOP, I saw how impactful (positive & negative), Facebook’s changes could be with things like notifications and invites. Is Facebook traffic a game to be played or something else? I wrestle with this question everytime I see that hockey stick chart coming from FB traffic.

I’ve been meeting a string of startups getting 20k installs per day (or more) very quickly. Is this the new norm? I know how long it took Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare to reach that level of daily sign ups. It took a lot longer than a few months.

Getting that level of traction is so early is very exciting. The benefits are obvious so I won’t go into them.

What are the drawbacks?

It can skew perspective. How much capital do you need? How many people do you need? What kind of people do you need?

I met an early stage company the other day and the founder presented a slide saying they plan on acquiring 100M users within a year based on the Series A fund raise. Their early traffic and user sign ups are exceptional and the company is only a few months old. Deliciously audacious and you know what, maybe they will get there. Its interesting to compare that with my conversation with David Karp, at 19, who told me he wanted to get 1M users after one year (instead they signed up 500k and I’m not complaining!)

The other thing about all of these companies that quickly reach 20k installs a day is it can make people (press, investors, employees) believe 20k per day is the new norm given the speed of distribution and number of socially connected users.

And I’m wondering if that’s really true and what is means.

If this is the new norm, it would lead us to believe apps and web services that don’t reach this level of velocity so quickly aren’t worth supporting with our time and money. If we applied that logic I can think of a long list of beloved apps that would be never have been given a chance that are massively huge and important today. Some things take time to grok beyond the early adopters.

One of the reasons why the Tumblr community is so damn awesome is that we have been doing this thing together for a long time. We didn’t get here because of OpenGraph. It’s a relationship that has seen a lot together. We’ve collectively celebrated and mourned. We’ve struggled with downtime issues. We share things we find wonderful and sad. Personal and professional. We get excited about new features together. We make stuff happen together.

A few months ago Caterina Fake made an argument that exceptionally rapid growth isn’t good for building online communities. It’s a great read and got me thinking.

I don’t want this post to suggest that I don’t like, care about or respect the levels of scale that we haven’t seen before. It’s absolutely stunning and I’m beyond happy for founders behind these companies. And I’m hoping to invest in some of them (or hopefully before they break out!).

I’m just trying to get some perspective about where we go from here.

This Isn’t Our Parade by Santigold Listen. Love....

Wed, 09 May 2012 07:47:00 -0400

This Isn’t Our Parade by Santigold

Listen. Love. Repeat.

shared from exfm

This tweet made me smile

Wed, 09 May 2012 07:36:26 -0400

This tweet made me smile

The importance of elders

Tue, 08 May 2012 14:45:00 -0400

Somehow I missed this one, but last week Jerry Colonna wrote a great post, “Mind Your Elders”.

In the post, he calls out the importance of “elders” in a startup ecosystem.

But, most of all, it needs Elders. That is, Mentors, coaches, Angel Investors; people who can serve informally and formally as guides. Their roles vary…from providing the seed capital to germinate ideas to providing a steadying, calm demeanor making the roller coaster of the startup experience just slightly easier to bear. “An Elder,” I say in my talks on the subject, “isn’t merely someone with grayer hair. It can be the CEO of the company next door who is two months ahead of you in their fundraising process. It can be the CTO of that failed company whom you bring in not just for their technical capability but for their experience in having lived through a failure and knowing that there’s life after failure.”

I couldn’t agree more.

We’ve seen elders engaged in NYC for many years now and the payoff is quite clear. Founders helping founders as angels, advisors, holding open office hours or various mentorship programs.

We didn’t have enough engaged elders in the Cambridge and Boston ecosystem for a long time. It was a hole that everyone felt. One of the reasons I feel better about the local scene is the emergence of connected elders. Its fantastic but we need more.

via barackobama: Holler for 26 straight months of job...

Tue, 08 May 2012 07:39:00 -0400

via barackobama:

Holler for 26 straight months of job growth.

what he said.

The Clash - Somebody Got Murdered sometimes you just gotta put...

Mon, 07 May 2012 06:49:00 -0400

The Clash - Somebody Got Murdered

sometimes you just gotta put on The Clash

shared from exfm

Having some fun with my new camera (Olympus E-M5, 3.2sec, f/7.1,...

Sun, 06 May 2012 20:30:57 -0400

Having some fun with my new camera

(Olympus E-M5, 3.2sec, f/7.1, 12mm, ISO 200)