January 2011
29 posts
“In this city of everything big, all I have ever done is build really small...”
– Gabriel Stulman
That moment, before something becomes the next big thing, is pretty special. Can there be this kind of scarcity in a digital world where ubiquity is so highly valued?
Kill Your Business Model
Last year we funded one of the top 10 grossing Health and Fitness applications on the iPhone, Runkeeper. The company was performing very well, the app had been downloaded by millions of people, they were profitable and had plenty of their own cash in the bank.
But they weren’t interested in just being an iPhone app and we weren’t interested in funding one. What we wanted to fund, and...
BRYCE DOT VC Office Hours at OATV HQ
When I moved to San Francisco six months back I did so, in part, to be more accessible. Being in in the city only a few days a week often meant back to back meetings late into the night on the days I was in town. It also meant pushing meetings out months into the future.
Now I’m trying to be a bit more proactive in making myself available. So I want to run a little experiment. My friend...
WatchAnother amazing Kinect hack in the world of Minecraft. I’ve been focusing on the impact of these hacks on desktop computing but the possibilities it opens for virtual worlds to be broadly accessible is pretty fantastic too.
Pretty sure that my 3 year old and newborn will look at a keyboard and mouse the same way my older kids look at VHS tapes, CDs and 35mm film.
“Other sites want to keep you inside at the computer, while our entire goal is to...”
– Naveen
“As a Redskins fan living in New York, I have little to fire back with when a...”
– Tim Gideon of PC Mag
Slow, confusing, inconsistent, vaporous? 2011 is the year of Android huh? Good luck with that.
Everyone was junior once
I have a chip on my shoulder. Or as a friend once told me, I have chips on both shoulders which makes me well balanced.
During my first year as a junior associate at a venture firm in Salt Lake City I was invited, by the partners of the firm, to join a lunch. A Silicon Valley law firm had just opened up shop in town and they wanted to treat us to a meal to see if we had any business to send...
“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are...”
– Dr. Martin Luther King
What would he have done with his time today? What are you going to do with yours?
via Seth’s Blog
“We believe that we’re on the face of the Earth to make great products, and...”
– Tim Cook, Acting Apple CEO, January 2009
One for the Know Thyself files.
Facebook is less like a nightclub and more like...
Doug Rushkoff had an interesting piece the other day that touched on something I’ve been thinking a bit about. In it he argues that Facebook is cashing in because they see that their party is over. And when a party is over, people get tired of socializing and leave. He says:
Yet social media is itself as temporary as any social gathering, nightclub or party. It’s the people that...
AWKWARD!
I hated dating. I was never very good at it. But as bad as I was at dating I was much much worse at breaking up. I was awkward in delivering the message and always bad at the post break up interaction. Its not that I didn’t have feelings for or want to have friendships with some of these ladies after I realized I didn’t feel “that way” about them. I just had this mental...
Anonymous asked: Have you ever funded startups that are raising funds to pivot their business model? The existing company is successful after a couple of years of existence, however, not scaling quickly. The use of funds would jumpstart a pivot and approach a new model and/or customer with the existing product.
Twitter Click Through Rates
“Don’t look at your stats”. That was the advice given to me by a good friend shortly after I started posting here more frequently. It was well intentioned and came from a very genuine place. Basically, he was concerned that if I paid attention to the traffic numbers I would get discouraged and eventually stop posting.
But, I just. can’t. help myself!
So, I have Google...
Everything will be reinvented
I’m not a fan of Facebook as a product. I have an account that I rarely use. I have the iPhone app that I’ll occasionally open to look at pictures friends have uploaded. I don’t use their groups, I don’t user their apps and I don’t poke anybody.
But I am a fan of Facebook, the company. And they did something this week that I think is very interesting and which put an...
WatchThere was a lot of noise made several weeks back about the record breaking project on Kickstarter that raised nearly $1M in their quest to build a series of watch kits based on the iPod nano. I didn’t pledge any cash to it; in fact, I never even clicked through to see what it was about. I saw pictures of it plastered all over the web and that’s all I needed to know. Or so I thought.
...
“If you’re looking for a career change, trying to get a startup idea going,...”
– Charlie
WatchI have a tremendous amount of respect for Jay Z as both an artist and an entrepreneur. He’s built a genere defining career around reflecting on his life and teasing out stories that frighten, warn and inspire others on their own journey. This Oprah Master Class is Jay Z at his best- the outsider who wasn’t supposed to amount to much but has risen further than he ever imagined.
Which...