B I J A N

Many consumer web services start out in life very specific and very simple.

Then they start adding stuff.

In the best case, it works because the company innovates and users are delighted with the new capabilities

In the worst case, the product becomes heavy and complicated.

Truthfully its never this cut and dry but I believe the point stands.

Yesterday I was at the Tumblr board meeting. The service is growing faster than ever which would make most CEOs happy

David Karp, Tumblr’s founder and ceo, said that while the Tumblr Dashboard has gained a tremendous amount of functionality over the past three years, many of the newer features are simply unnecessary for first time users.

For example, things like number of followers, or number of “likes”, messages or even Radar don’t mean much for day 1 users.

So they are trying out something different.

Now when first time users sign up for Tumblr, they don’t see many of the newer things. They get a focused Tumblr dashboard that gets them engaged. Then after a few posts the social features start to elegantly appear.

I think that’s brilliant and not intuitive.

Last night I was at small gathering in nyc. One of the entrepreneurs for a cool local startup said out loud that he thought Tumblr’s onboarding was the best out there.

I think he’s probably right. And I love the new approach that they are taking to balance keeping things simple while adding new functionality.

Its moving from a pure ‘less is more’ to a “less and more”. Its not easy to pull off but its a powerful idea.

Bravo.

(Pls excuse typos and lack of links. Wrote this on my phone)

I am a big fan of the Android platform for mobile.

There are so many reasons to root for their success. And in many ways they deserve tremendous credit. The sheer number of android powered handsets, the openness in the app store ans code, google voice, speech reco, kick ass browser, best mobile gmail experience, out of box + add your gmail credentials and magic happens and plenty of other things too.

But right now I feel like the bookends of mobile are blackberry on one end and iphone on the other. Both do their own thing extremely well and their users love them for it.

Android is in the middle and the middle aint a great place to be.

I believe the Android folks need to do a few things to nail this opportunity.

-Ease of use. I consider myself a power user but Android is still too complicated. Even with htc sense ui it’s still confusing to me.

-speed. Navigating around the os and apps aren’t silky smooth. Flip thru photos on the htc incredible and compare to iPhone gs and you’ll know what I mean. It’s not the hardware.

-precision. I couldn’t figure out why the htc incredible needs that optical joystick thing. It’s there because you need it for precise ui gestures like moving the curser over one letter for example. Instead of adding a joystick, nail the precision

-media player. Android is starving for a local, beautiful media player. I’m picturing something that someone like David Karp or Zach Klein could design. It’s missing on Android and it would make a huge difference.

I’m betting that google solves these things with help from the developer community. Andy Rubin is brilliant and I know his team is superb.

They are so damn close. It’s exciting and frustrating at the same time.

(please excuse typos and lack of links. Wrote this post on my phone).

I did something I’ve never done last week.

I went away for an entire week without checking work email. Not once. Not even a looksy

I set up my “out of office” message to let folks know that I wouldn’t be checking emails and to contact my assistant if there were any urgent matters (there were 2 such things and were handled with two quick phone calls)

Otherwise everyone in my work life was very helpful and supportive of my time away.

Last night after I put the kids to bed I took a look at my inbox. Oh, god.

I then spent the next four hours straight getting through the vast majority of my inbox. My initial thinking was “this is a lousy way to spend Sunday night”

But then I realized those four hours were a great trade. In the past I would have spent 30minutes-1 hour doing mail per day on vacation to avoid a nasty re-entry.

But email as we know isn’t something you can turn on and off. It lingers. In your head. Get an email from someone with good news or bad news and it’s stuck in your mind long after your turn off your phone. So that 30minutes per day thing isnt really how it works.

And getting through it Sunday night just made my re-entry this morning feel great.

So it took my 20+ years but I now have a new vacation move

1. Make a comittment to avoid work email on vacation.

2. Set your out of office message and let folks know that you won’t be checking email.

3. Spend the time the night before re-entry getting through most of your inbox

4. Enjoy your well earned vacation.

I’m back. Refreshed and recharged.

(pls excuse any typos. Wrote this on my iPhone)

I don’t know if I would call VCs wannabe entrepreneurs and I hadn’t heard that one before.

I do know many VCs that truly love the products and people that they invest in. So they/we can get excitable about product ideas and market opportunities.

And I know several VCs that left their firms to join a company. For example, my friend Chamath left Mayfield years ago to join Facebook. @jess left Venrock and joined Twitter. So it does happen.

But most VCs want to be investors not operators.

Are you torn between starting your own company vs joining an existing VC? Or are you thinking about joining an existing startup?

Ultimately its about the people and which path will you love more.

Of course there are other factors like geography and other life issues. But thats the best advice I have for you since I don’t know you.

(question via Tumblr Ask)