Month: August 2010

I’m involved in a bunch of young companies that are at various stages of their journey.

I think one of the hardest challenges for sure is the balance of urgency and thoughtfulness. It’s hard for CEOs and it can be tricky for board members simply because they aren’t at the company every day. 

I’ve seen fellow board members get itchy (or worse) when they perceive the CEO doesn’t have a sense of urgency. I believe most of CEOs do have a sense of urgency. They are watching the balance sheet, thinking about their team, working on the plan at hand and thinking about the future. If you are a startup CEO you are trying to make things happen. 

I think that many VCs (myself included at times) tend to confuse a perceived lack of urgency vs a concern that the company isn’t making enough progress given it’s resources. Those are two different things and shouldn’t be mixed up.

On the other hand, there are CEOs that move at a million miles an hour. You can feel their energy as they walk into the room. They get products out the door, they don’t let toxic employees linger. They are good at making decisions. They step on the gas and go.

And invariably the latter CEOs need to catch their breath once in awhile. I think a good board member will help them do that. Take a step back and take in all in. Ideally board meetings aren’t a formality but rather an opportunity to do just that. Take it all in – discuss what’s working great and not working.

I’ll end this post with a quote from Jerry Colonna’s most excellent recent blog post, Standing Still While Your Hair’s On Fire.  

I love that first line: “Stand still.” For me it evokes the image of the kindergarten teacher, walking into a room filled with screaming five-year olds. “What’s the best way to get the five year olds to calm down?” I’d ask. “Should you scream louder?”

Of course not; the right thing to do is to shut the lights. And, if they’re especially rambunctious, make them put their heads down on the desk for a nap. It works for five year olds. It works for your employees. And, most importantly, it works for the crazy thoughts in your head.

I think that thought of lights out and heads on desk is a good one for all of us sometimes. 

Tomorrow is our last full day in NYC for this particular trip. Our oldest daughter was at ballet school here in the city, so we rented an apartment and the whole family came down to spend the two weeks here.

As many of my friends and portfolio companies know, I’m in NYC all the time. When I’m not in the bay area, I get to NYC just about every week for at least one day  – sometimes more.

But it has been super sweet to stay in NYC with lauren and the kids.

Some other thoughts that come to mind:

1. The west village is my favorite part of the city by far. We found a great place on VRBO and it worked out well. Turned out that Jessica Szohr lives in this building. Lauren and kids ran into her 3 times. 

2. Thanks to Andy and John at Betaworks for letting me use their offices several times throughout the two weeks. I’ll also be there tomorrow afternoon guys so you aren’t done with me yet!

3. We hit a number of our favorite restaurants while we were here. But we also made it to some new places with friends which was a real treat like DBGB and Fatty Crab. 

4. It was fun checking into places on Foursquare and then have friends drop by the restaurant. Mo found us at Joseph Leonard one night because of Foursquare. My friend Tim also sent over a few dessert suggestions via SMS when he saw us check into some of his favorite places. So cool. 

5. I also got a lot of work done over these two weeks. Packed in a bunch of board meetings and met a lot of great entrepreneurs. Startups don’t slow down in August that’s for sure. 

6. I don’t know who to explain it but the city became much smaller to me on this trip – and in a good way.

7. Renting bikes and going for a family ride along the hudson was a lot of fun. 

We had an absolute blast over the past few weeks. This city is just fantastic. But it will also be nice to go home on Saturday. Our little boy told Lauren today, “I miss my dog and my light saber”

I hear ya buddy. 

I’m going to end this post now because I gotta get some plans together for tomorrow night! 

As we all know, when a new movie comes out it’s first released for theaters

Several months later, retailers get the next window to sell the movie as a DVD.

Then months after that cable gets video on demand rights to that film.

These “windows” allow each distribution partner to maximize the economics of the film for their particular channel.

This morning I saw Peter Kafka’s story link on Twitter about the big Netflix/epix deal. It’s a big deal where netflix pays big bucks to epix for streaming rights to high quality films such as Iron Man etc.
(sorry no link since I’m typing this on my iPhone.)

I have the highest respect for Netflix and I’m a happy customer for years now.

But here’s the thing as Peter pointed out in his post on AllThingsD. Netflix is getting the Epix content after cable’s window.

For much of August we are renting an apartment in NYC. Our apartment has fantastic broadband but television comes from cable. ( I cant believe you all live with that crazy crusty guide on this time Warner set top box. Oh. My. God it’s awful.)

The person renting us this apartment doesn’t have hbo. Lauren and I are True Blood fans. At home we watch it on demand. At the apartment we can’t. I went to buy the latest episode on iTunes. Nothing except season 1 and 2. Then I went to amazon. Nada.

The only thing I could do was download an illegal copy. I downloaded the file in about 4minutes. I try to pay for content whenever I can and I don’t feel so bad because we dutifully pay for hbo at home. And I tried to buy it legitmately online as well.

Many people won’t go thru these hoops

Torrents are too easy, too high quality, and torrents don’t care about windows.

I don’t know the latest stats on torrent usage in the united states. I’m not sure if it’s growing fast but I will tell you unfortunately the ease of use and quality is stunning.

And that is a problem. I want content owners to get paid. That is why I pay for content.

But I think content owners need to get serious about the web. The network is getting too fast and software is getting too good to stick to the old rules about content distribution and monetization.