Bon Iver – I Can’t Make You Love Me
An unreal cover.
Month: June 2011
If Exfm’s early efforts with its iPhone app are any indication, Cupertino should think about cutting its losses with Ping and teaming up with theses guys to shore up that side of its mobile business, too.
(via gigaompulse)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Same Mistake
Brand new single. Love this.
exfm for iPhone !
If you follow me on Tumblr, you know how much I love music. I try to share a song nearly every day. I also consume a ton of music. It’s one my favorite things to do. And I’m lucky – my friends have great taste in music.
One of my favorite social music services is exfm (disclsoure: we are investors in the company).
And today they have released their very first iOS app. You can download the app for free here.
I was going to write all about how exfm and how the new app works but TechCrunch and Mashable did a mighty fine job already.
So give exfm a try. Once you sign up, you can follow and check out what me and my friends David, Andy, Dan (exfm cofounder), and Charles (exfm cofounder) are curating every day.
Our investment in CSN Stores
Yesterday, CSN Stores announced their first institutional round of capital. Our firm, Spark Capital, led that financing. My partner Alex who now sits on the CSN board wrote the following guest post that I’d like to share.
* * *
Spark is very proud to announce our investment in CSN Stores (www.csnstores.com). CSN Stores is not your typical venture backed company and that is what makes it so special. The company is now the second largest privately held eCommerce company. The company was founded by Niraj Shah and Steve Conine. Niraj and Steve are friends from Cornell who have built a number of successful companies before founding CSN Stores.
With CSN Stores, Niraj and Steve set out to do what is hard. They picked an eCommerce vertical that others didn’t want to play in, home and garden. They partnered with over 3,000 manufacturers and taught many of them how to drop-ship so CSN Stores didn’t need a meaningful warehouse. They hired over 700 employees, most of which are in Boston, a city in which many said a big technology company could no longer be built. They built web sites that attract over 10 million visits a month. They expanded into Europe where they are growing very quickly.
Most incredible though is that CSN Stores is a bootstraped company. Niraj and Steve have built everything without ever having raised capital and have been profitable from day one. A truly rare feat.
Niraj and Steve set out to do what is hard and their results speak for themselves. CSN Stores will generate well over $500 million in revenue this year, growing at a 50+% rate, all while being profitable.
As Niraj and Steve launch their Wayfair.com brand in the coming months and continue to build out their company, my colleagues and I at Spark are thrilled to join them during their next stage of growth.
Margot & the Nuclear So & So’s – As Tall As Cliffs
Andrew Parker – The Gong Show: Welcome David Haber
Andrew wrote an excellent post about David Haber who recently joined our team at Spark. Please join me and welcome David to the family.
Jimi Hendrix – Like A Rolling Stone
I distinctly remember switching from AltaVista to Google back in 2000 in no small part because it was blazing fast. To me, performance is a feature, and I simply like using fast websites more than slow websites, so naturally I’m going to build a site that I would want to use. But I think there’s also a lesson to be learned here about the competitive landscape of the public internet, where there are two kinds of websites: the quick and the dead.
I got your point about “Tumblr isn’t quite a blog. It’s something else.” But I believe knowing the reaction of you audience is always important. Many times comments bring great value to the post, plus having that idea exchange with your audience is always healthy.
i hear you. i want feedback. it’s just what format.
that’s the question I’m thinking about out loud.