Is There Nothing We Could Do – Badly Drawn Boy (acoustic)
Damon’s voice is something else.
Month: January 2010
Mean Red Spider – Spoon
New album comes out next week. Here’s the b-side to the single “Written In Reverse”. You can stream the entire record on NPR.
A Line In The Dirt – Eels
Jan 19th can’t come soon enough.
A little color behind my ‘crazy mode’ comment
Last week, Scott Kirsner organized a dinner over at Microsoft in Cambridge.
It was a nice get together with a number of old and new friends. Everyone at the table is focused on improving the local tech scene in their own passionate way. We all shared our respective efforts. It was wonderful to hear what everyone was working on.
Bill Warner is an inspiration. He is doing more than his part by being a successful entrepreneur, tireless leader, angel investor, conference organizer, industry ninja and the heart of TechStars Boston. I feel like a lazy slog every time I see Bill.
Jeff Bussgang is driving a number of things including Stay in MA. David Beisel started and runs WebInno. Kate Imbach runs MobileMonday. Nabeel and I got OpenCoffee Cambridge going. I’m trying to get rid of non-compete agreements in this state. Shawn Broderick, Tim Rowe & everyone else at the dinner is pushing their own efforts in a super positive direction. And the collective impact is tremendous. Things are happening in this town.
On Friday, Scott wrote up his thoughts from the dinner in Boston Globe. I made a comment over the dinner that Scott shared in his article:
“Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital said that one way to invigorate the start-up ecosystem here, and perhaps even create big companies in emerging industries, is to go into "crazy mode,” funding all kinds of ideas – some of which may seem nutty or insignificant. Some may just need $10,000 to get going, not $10 million.“
I’d like to explain that one a bit.
Over dinner someone made a comment in response to seed incubator programs like YC and TechStars and stated we were funding "feature companies” and we need provide “tough love” instead of being a cheerleader for these startups.
And that’s when I blurted out my “crazy mode” line. Because I couldn’t disagree more with that sentiment actually.
I want to see local VCs and angels fund more YC and TechStars startups – not less.
Many early/seed stage web startups begin life focused on solving one simple thing and in a capital efficient manner. In reality they have no choice. Yet, if they can nail it, they can start building tremendous value. And their capital efficiency is a gift to everyone. We should do more of this not less.
Pefect example: Dropbox was a YC seed funded company. I think most missed Dropbox because in the early early days of the company it probably was considered a feature or something Google/Microsoft/Apple/xyz big company could do overnight. Plus there were a number of competitors in the market.
The idea might be conceptually simple but they nailed the user experience which is everything and definitely not simple. The technology just works. Dropbox may have started life with a small seed but they have become an amazing company and have built a killer product with a solid business model.
Many successful consumer web startups began as capital efficient startups focused on nailing one thing. Consider Facebook, Twitter, digg, linkedin, craigslist, flickr….I could go on. Imagine what they looked like on day 1. In the early days they might look like features or even toys.
With all of that in my head, I instinctively threw out my “crazy mode” comment.
If I could take it back, I would.
Because I dont’ believe funding these companies is crazy.
It’s the future.
The Streets, Has It Come To This?*
After going back and forth with a few friends on Rolling Stones’ 100 best albums of the decade, Bijan pointed me to The Guardian’s top 50 of the decade.
Fascinating to see the difference between the US and UK sensibility.
Best thing to come from it though is a revisiting of The Streets, who’s ‘Original Pirate Material’ the Guardian has as the best record of the decade (yowzers!).
Nonetheless, a fantastic throwback listen for today.
It’s a great record. Been listening to it a lot since the Guardian top 50 post.
Let My Love Open The Door – Rilo Kiley
Original by Pete Townshend.
What was your favorite band growing up that was not the Rolling Stones or the Clash?
the who.
(testing out the new tumblr ask feature).
But Rubin is a product fanatic in the same way that Jobs is. The NY Times did a good overview of Rubin in 2005. One line about Rubin, a former Apple engineer and cofounder of WebTV and Danger, stuck with me from that article: “Mr. Rubin is a proven member of an earlier group of engineers-turned-entrepreneurs who have a passion for building complete digital systems.”
Andy Rubin Has Some Steve Jobs In Him
My friend Andy getting the credit he deserves. Entrepreneurs like Andy (as well as Joe Britt, Steve Perlman, Bruce Leak, Jeff Hawkins, the late Phil Goldman and others) was the inspiration behind my post the other day. We need to find the next generation of those folks. Complete digital systems. That’s what I’m talking about.