Archive for the 'tech' Category

no regrets about going with my gut.

Published on September 14, 2009 in business, nyc, personal and tech. Comments Tags: , , , , .
Scoring a Stash

Image by Mick Opportunity via Flickr

So I was watching the Techcrunch 50 tonight live on ustream while waiting for Julie to get off the phone before watching Mad Men, and just as I was about to switch it off, I saw a name I recognized.  The upcoming presenter was a company called Yext, a company I knew.  My jaw hit the floor.

You see when I first moved to NYC 3 years ago this week, I was all open and up for anything.  I told myself I just wanted to do something interesting with people I could have fun with and learn from.  I wanted to continue pursuing my path as an entrepreneur either by starting my own company or coming on board VERY early with another startup.  So I went to all sorts of meetups, NextNY events, and made lots of random linkedin meetings.  It was actually fun, and quite honestly I don’t remember a lot of the people I met with during that time, but I do have to say, I remember Howard.

I actually met Howard on Craigslist.  One of the things I did at that time to increase my chances of meeting interesting people was to post something on Craigslist saying basically I was an entrepreneur, I had just moved here, and I was looking for another entrepreneur to to partner up with.  I got a LOT of responses to that posting, and about 99% of them were junk (no offense to the responders).  But Howard’s for some reason intrigued me.  I think it simply said “I’m interested, tell me more,” but I did a little digging on his email address and I found an old article about him being a hot shot college entrepreneur.  I gave him a call, we connected over the phone so we decided to meet.  We met for drinks a few nights later.

I actually liked Howard right away.  He’s clearly very smart, he’s very direct, and he’s vision driven.  He had a lot more experience as an entrepreneur than I did, and really knew his way around NYC.  He told me he was working on an idea around generating leads for local businesses, using his previous company experience “driving millions of qualified leads (he said this a lot).”  He said he had another co-founder, the tech guy, and they were looking for someone else to bring on.  I was very intrigued.  Actually I was really excited.  We agreed to meet a few more times, and to meet when his partner came into town.

After a few more meetings, and a quick trip to Chicago for a conference where I was able to see reactions of potential customers, they offered me a deal.  They wanted me to join them as a founder and to buy into the company at somewhat higher valuations than they had.  I also had to agree to stay on for at least 3 years to get all of my equity (I forget exactly all of the details).  I was a little nervous about the money, but was really nervous about being locked in for 3 years.  This is something I’ve grown quite a bit on since, but back then I was terried of being locked down for anything.  I had only spent a couple of days with these guys, and they were asking me to invest money and committ 3 years of my life. What if I didn’t like it?  What if I wasn’t as good as they or I thought I was?  What if I found something better?  Deeper down than the fear of time committment, I knew 2 things:

1.) Howard would make it work.  He would make a big, successful company, and he would do it quickly

2.) I really didn’t want to be part of it.

So I did what I had always done up to that point…I  found a way to ease out the back door.  I talked to one friend, a VC in Columbus, who told me exactly what I wanted to hear at that time (that the deal was not great for me), and I made my decision: I was walking away. I told Howard via email I was not doing the deal.  I do regret that now (not telling him to his face), but that was how I did things back then. But I felt like a freed prisoner and it felt amazing.  I remember walking down broadway thinking to myself, “wow I really do know what I want.”  I guess I was impressed that I was able to look through an opportunity to probably make a lot of money, and do a lot of the things I want to do, and still hear my gut say “it’s not this one.”

Which leads me to tonight..There on the tv before me, with my jaw on the floor, was Howard and Brent (the two co-founders) presenting their newest product offering at the Techcrunch 50 conference. On top of that they were presenting to some people I really admire and would like to meet someday, and quite frankly their demo was VERY impressive.  During the demo Howard let it slip that their current business, the one I was asked to co-found and invest in, will do $20M in revenues this year. I laughed out loud.  I turned to Julie and laughed again, saying “now THAT would have been a good investment.”  I laughed some more and finally said to her “well I was good enough to find an opportunity like that once, and was good enough to know it wasn’t for me, so I’m certainly capable of finding another one that good again.”

And as hard as that may be to believe, I feel that way.  I’m very happy and proud of what Howard and his team have been able to do, and I knew they would do it.  And yes sometimes I wish that I had made better decisions financially in my life.  But as good as that one would have been for my bank account, it would have been worse to ignore my gut. I have no regrets about my decision. And my gut says now if I was good enough to find an opportunity that big once, I can do it again.  But this time it will be right for me.

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Opportunities in the moment

Published on February 3, 2009 in business, nyc and tech. Closed Tags: .
TAXI in Curitiba-PR, Brazil.Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been meaning to write something on Fred Wilson’s post last week on job losses here in the US, noting that the announcement last week of 75,000 jobs being wiped out in one day exceeded the amount of jobs he had helped create in 22 years of venture investing. Wow.   He goes on to say that we need people going out on their own to help us get through this.  I agree.

I think going out on your own can mean a lot of things, and doesn’t necessarily being an entrepreneur as most people think.  You don’t have to know how to build a business or raise money or hire people, you have to know how to capitalize on your unique skills and abilities.  You have to know how to find opportunities that exist right now in your life, all around you.  I really liked this comment on Fred’s post elaborates on this better than I can:

An anecdote to illustrate the point of the awakening of entrepreneurial impulses in the population: a cab driver that took me to SFO airport from a recent JP Morgan Healthcare conference told me that he has been asking himself, what can he do better in this grim environment. His decision was to focus on nurturing and growing his local clientele, to increase their loyalty to him, and to bypass convention traffic, as it would not mean return business. – Now if everyone from cabbies to white collar folks is asking, what can they do better and how, wouldn’t that necessarily lead to a bump in productivity, perhaps an unexpectedly meaningful one? I hope so. Same for previous non-entrepreneurs becoming entrepreneurs – in some sense, it is a numbers game – if enough of them build highly scalable, fast growing businesses, VC-backed or bootstrapped, it might have a strong enough effect to at least dampen the fall we are in. I choose to remain a long-term optimist, if wounded at present.

I’ve been saying for a few years now that I think more and more people will eventually beome their own mini companies and create a world where we are more likely to be sole proprietors than employees.  I think it’s  likely that people will work on “projects” instead of working for companies in the near future.  Think I’m crazy? This process has already started.  You can see it on sites like elance.com, odesk.com, 99designs.com and many, many more.  These sites are filled with very talented people who are building thriving businesses (some one man shops, some have several people) focused on doing what they do best, whether that be design, programming, sales, or whatever. Now these sites are by no means perfect, and they certainly are not capable of having a major effect on the economy at the moment, but I think they could be a starting point for something that may.

I can’t help but think of all the amazingly talented, smart, hard working people out there who are not working at the moment.  To quote a friend that’s an “incredible waste of national resources.”  People are not losing their jobs because there is no work to do, in fact there is more work to be done now, it’s just that no one has figured out how to tap those resources.  Isn’t there an answer in the elances of the world? If we could figure out how to tap the incredible worldwide design talent by using a marketplace like elance,  can’t we expand that to put some of these people to work?  Doing something they are good at (and most likely enjoy)? Just a bit of rambling…

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Macbook vs Motorola Q

Published on July 9, 2007 in business, stocks and tech. Closed

Well I never thought I would say this, but apparently the Motorola Q is a more durable device than my once trusty Macbook.   Last Friday my macbook’s hard drive crashed complelety, rendering the computer useless and wiping all my data  clean in the process. (fortunately I’ve backed up most important items in one way or another) My Motorola Q on the other hand, despite all sorts of crappy design flaws, continues to work properly.  Motorola 1, Apple Macbook 0.    I guess beauty and good design doesn’t always win.

If you aren’t backing up your important data, do it now.  Crashes do happen and they suck.

useful link:

Jungle Disk 

How not to sell…

Published on April 25, 2007 in business and tech. Closed

In trying to setup my HSA (Health Savings Account), I’ve been venturing into the world of horrible bureaucratic websites that require you to download PDF’s to get any information. I was fortunate to find a human friendly site in Vimo, which does a pretty good job of rating and explaining the different HSA options. It guided me to an HSA administrator I’ve heard good things about from other people called Exante Bank, so I went over to their site and was quickly frustrated.

I will pay someone a $100 if they can tell me what the fees / costs or even benefits are associated with having Exante manage your HSA because I’ll be damned if it’s anywhere on the site. But then again maybe I’m in the minority here in wanting to know what something is going to cost me before I go through application process. Perhaps there are lots of people out there who just like the name and don’t need to weigh the pro’s and cons. They can be persuaded to buy with a vague FAQ section and some pictures of happy people. Now I understand that HSA’s are a new thing and people need to be told what the general benefits are, but I’d also LOVE to know the benefits of putting my HSA in your hands instead of someone else. Hey, I’m ready to be sold, sell me!

This is a classic example of a site that is built purely from the perspective of the company/site owner and not from that of a potential customer. If a potential customer had built this site (or a smart selling company) it would hit you with the benefits right when you landed there. It would be extremely easy to navigate, and display all the costs/fees along with benefits in a clear box or diagram. It would display stories of successful customers, and it would show any press mentions they had. Maybe it would even show me / tell me their management features and just how EASY it is to mange my HSA with Exante. Actually, come to think of it, it would look a lot like this (just with HSA info)

Instead, you’ve annoyed me enough to look elsewhere.

Evolution of Electricity

Published on April 23, 2007 in Links, business, future and tech. Closed

I’m officially obsessed with the TED talks website. For those of you who don’t know, TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a conference held once a year to bring the best minds in the fields above together. It’s mission is simple: Spreading Ideas. Every year they get some of the best minds together and have them speak. They record every speaker and have 100’s of past talks posted on their website, which I’ve become obsessed with recently.

I really enjoyed a speech given by Amazon’s visionary Founder, Jeff Bezos in which he compares the state of the internet industry today to that of the electric appliance industry of 1916. I couldn’t agree more.

I went to Thomas Edison’s Ft. Myers home about 3 years ago, and I remember having this very same thought as I walked through his workshop with his scattered impressive collection of inventions. I couldn’t help but notice that at that time electricity was seen really as only useful for lighting and some heating. All the wiring and infrastructure that went into place was designed to deliver electricity just to do these two functions. In fact (as you’ll see in the video) the first electric appliances plugged into the grid with plugs that were nothing more than light bulb sockets. These first generic electric appliances were merely an indicator of things to come, a true unlocking of the power and versatility of electricity.

Interestingly enough the internet’s story is very similar to that of electricity. It runs through a wire to our homes, but is unable to offer any value until we actually plug into it. It was started really to create a communication network between computers, then built out to facilitate communication between people, and has exploded to facilitate self expression, commerce, and information sharing. But we’ve really only begun plugging our first appliance’s light socket plugs into the grid. Just as electricity’s infrastructure enabled a universe of appliances that bettered our lives (from the A/C to TV, to the computer and internet itself), so too will the very young internet infrastructure.

I’ve heard people say that all the good ideas are taken and the “gold rush,” is over. I’d say, we’ve only just begun. Exciting times ahead.

Check out the video.

Video Post…

Published on February 2, 2007 in business, stocks and tech. Closed

Today I came across a few interesting videos in my normal blog reading that I thought were interesting…

One of my favorite bloggers, Fred Wilson, gave a keynote speech at the Software and Information Industry Association Summit where he talked about the future of information services. I really agree with Fred’s points about information becoming free, while attention is becoming scarce. The real future of information services will create value by capturing, filtering and delivering information at the most relevant time and place. The sea of data has become so vast, that there is no way for us all to stay up to date. There’s a tremedous opportunity in building out a service that can consantly monitor the data from all corners of the web, and alert customers when new, extremely relevant infromation become available. That’s what services like Monitor110 do for companies on Wall St, and I would imagine we’ll see more like them popping up over the next few yaers.

The speech and the Q&A session are worth watching.
Fred Wilson’s keynote
(via Darren Herman)

Get a glimpse at life inside Google from the work environment to the food. I’m really curious about Sergey’s shoes at the end called zcoils, they look comfortable but man are they dorky.
Google Recruiting video

Goog / Tivo together?

Published on February 1, 2007 in business, future, stocks and tech. Closed

Google came out with blockbuster numbers yesterday prompting everyone but shareholders to gasp in awe. They had a profit of over $1B, nearly triple the amount from the same qaurter a year ago. It also appears that big brands, the slowest movers to the internet ad game, and also Yahoo’s one major advantage over Google are moving aggressively towards Google’s advertising platform. In an article in this week’s Business Week they review the Google call from yesterday, where they mentioned that these big brands such as Proctor and Gamble, Volvo, and Officemax have all placed video, banner, and text ads across google’s network.

I was most interested in the part of the article concerining Google’s ability to advertise on TV.

Schmidt even implied that television advertising was ripe for Google to handle. He said Google’s targeting technology can “really apply well” to TV, and allow television stations to charge much higher rates for that targeting. He said there was an opportunity for Google to use data from TV set-top boxes, which have unique Internet addresses, to do that targeting.

I think there is definitely a huge opportunity here for Google. But I think there may be an equally big opportunity here for a little company called Tivo. They are far and away THE brand of dvr devices. Like Google they have become a verb as people often refer to recording a program as “tivoing” it. My real question is when are they going to drop the hardware/service provider biz and start licensing their name/software to cable companies. If they would’ve done this already, they’d be sitting on top of access to the largest network of set top boxes in the world. We know they are building creative and interesting ways to deliver advertising by their recent patent applications, so why not move forward with the master plan already?

It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again…Tivo is an acquisition target. At $518M market cap, it’s worth less than HALF of youtube, a company with very little revenues at the time of it’s acquistion. For a billion dollars or less (less than Google’s profit this quarter) someone could most likely have Tivo’s loved brand, name, and service to call their own. Can you imagine what a company with deep pockets like Google’s could do with Tivo? They could preinstall google earth on every device, run video ads and video adwords, and even show youtube clips right on the tv. They could open up google video’s video marketplace to let people pay and view videos streamed. There are a million possibilties.
Google, what do you think?

(by the way, I’m a tivo shareholder)

tunnel vision

Published on January 20, 2007 in business, delicious, nyc and tech. Closed
Something I’ve talked with my friend Lee about extensively is the somewhat dangerous tunnel vision that goes on around here in the web/tech world. People seem to dismiss “old school,” companies as the has-beens of the economy. I swear I hear more about Digg supposedly being worth $60M, Facebook being worth well over $1B, or Delicious supposedly being sold for $30M than I’d like. These are not economic power houses as some seem to believe. Now don’t get me wrong, they are fantastic numbers for the investors and founders because these are low cost businesses to build/operate , but to portray any of these guys as new “players,” in the economy is laughable. Everyday, there are far bigger companies executing on 10, 20, or even 100 times the scale. Let’s not forget about the true leaders.
I think this guy sums it up best (from Reddit, via Drew )
Think about that, and then think about just how much panache WalMart has compared to google: Zero.

I get this impression everyday, and I’ve come up with an answer: I
am online everyday, and looks like always reading the same sites (a
little bit of herd mentality, I guess).

I was reading someone talking about how “Google is the 3rd computer era” and he made some snarky comments about IBM.

You know, IBM? That small 100 year old company with 80 billion in revenues last year? Yeah, that one.

And when I read about how Paul Graham got ~$40 million from his
“lisp startup” or the off-hours delicious got ~$30 million with “social
tagging bookmark WEB TWO POINT WOW” and people go NUTS on this, like if
it’s epitome of business, I just remember IBM makes daily deals of $200
million dollars.

Is it cool? Does it have free soda, candies and massages?
No. But do they know how to make money? You bet. And it’s damn hard to
make what IBM does too. If you play a video game from the next
generation, you own them that :p

iPhone, what’s really important?

Published on January 19, 2007 in business, stocks and tech. Closed

I’m definitely in the crowd oohing and ahhing over last week’s release of the Apple iPhone, but I’ve been shocked by the sheer number of nerd complainers across the blogs lately. I keep hearing the same complaints…touch screen bad, closed platform very bad, no third party apps, way too expensive, etc…The truth is the avg joe could care less about “closed platform,” or lack of “3rd party apps.” Most people are really blown away from what they’ve seen of the phone, and I would imagine that Apple won’t have a problem selling it. Bloggers are sometimes too techy for their own good, failing to realize the (and the people Apple REALLY cares about) masses could care less about all that junk above. Charlie says it best:

They didn’t care about iHandcuffs, third party apps or whether or not they are locking themselves into Apple.
The fact is… Apple’s products are such a vast improvement in overall consumer experience that most users will be more than satisfied. All the technobloggers are bitching about the lack of openness.

My 2nd favorite response to tech complaints was an Engadget comment (I don’t usually read them, there are always too many) posted by a guy named Russel. He posted a response to this comment:

Apparently none of you guys realize how bad of an idea a touch-screen

is on a phone. I foresee some pretty obvious and pretty major problems here.

I’ll be keeping my Samsung A707, thanks. It’s smaller, it’s got a protected screen, and it’s got proper buttons. And it’s got all the same features otherwise. (Oh, but it doesn’t run a bloatware OS that was never designed for a phone.)

Color me massively disappointed.

Russel’s response:

And this is what Jeff said back in 1984:

“Apparently none of you guys realize how bad of an idea a mouse is for a computer. I foresee some pretty obvious and pretty major problems here.

I’ll be keeping my Commadore 64, thanks. It’s cheaper, it’s got Lotus 1-2-3, and it’s got a command line operating system. And it’s got more software. (Oh, but it doesn’t run a bloatware “Graphic user interface” that eats all the processing power.)

Color me massively disappointed.”

And this is what he said in 2001

“Apparently none of you guys realize how bad of an idea a clickwheel is for a mp3 player. I foresee some pretty obvious and pretty major problems here.

I’ll be keeping my Diamond Rio, thanks. It’s cheaper, it’s got all my music on it, and it’s got a better battery. And it’s smaller. (Oh, but it doesn’t run a bloatware GUI that eats all the battery power.) Color me massively disappointed.”

Will you never learn?

There’s a reason why people like Jeff aren’t running consumer product companies like Apple. They lack the ability to see beyond the tech side of things into what the average consumer really wants. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, is a genius at this.

Weatherbill…a market for wacky weather protection

Published on January 18, 2007 in business, climate change, stocks, tech and weather. Closed

One of my favorite blogs, Paul Kedrosky’s Infections Greed has a post today on a new company called WeatherBill.
WeatherBill is:

In effect, a tool to allow people to create their own weather-related
short- and long-term insurance policies — and it will appeal to a
broad swath of companies whose business are weather-affected.

It appears to essentially be a marketplace where people can first evaluate what bad weather costs them in terms of sales, then they can purchase short or long term insurance plans to cover themselves from these losses going forward. On the other side it gives investors the opportunity to own these contracts or create their own that businesses can purchase. It appears it may definitely take some work to build up an efficient market, but I believe that the rapidly changing and increasingly sporadic weather makes a service like this definitely worth watching.