Netizen: Marc Andreessen

Showing posts with label Marc Andreessen. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

FourSquare: $20 Million At $95 Million Valuation

There has been tremendous buzz today about FourSquare's new round of funding. This process has gone for a few, long months now. It has been one drawn out process. There has been drama. There has been intrigue. The sweet spot for me was when after months of talk Yahoo might buy FourSquare, FourSquare instead went ahead and stole a key talent from Yahoo. That's the way you do it.

Selling FourSquare Would Be A Mistake, Partnering Would Be Genius

When there was talk it might get bought, I strongly argued selling FourSquare would be a mistake. I was not saying, do the right thing, don't go after the money. What I was saying was, think about money, big money, do not sell.

I am not the first person to draw FourSquare-Twitter parallels. But I sure am one who gets the parallel. The two have had similar trajectories. At first sight a tweet feels as lightweight as checking in. What the.

Twitter had enormous buzz. It scaled but not as well as I would have liked. It made monetization moves, but much too late for my tastes. And it has done a lousy job of adding new features. FourSquare has scaled well. What is the FourSquare version of the fail whale? I don't know it. And FourSquare has been very impressive in the monetization department. But FourSquare has not impressed me in the features department. And I have to say that out loud because, unlike Twitter, FourSquare has competition. I hope this new round of funding allows FourSquare to cement its lead. I wish Dennis (@dens) and Naveen (@naveen) all the best.

Like Andy Grove said, only the paranoid survive. Checking in is the starting piont of the FourSquare experience. Companies for which that is not true - Yahoo, Facebook, Google, Twitter - are not serious threats, although all of them could use that key feature. Checking in in the mobile space is like the inbox in the email space, it is basic. But that check in as the starting point space has a few different players, and checking in is an activity that leaves much room for imagination. Could FourSquare ride that imagination wave? If it does, it goes IPO in a few years. If it doesn't, it should then go ahead and sell off. I am betting it will ride the wave. We shall see.

FourSquare has a shot at going IPO before MeetUp.com, a more senior tech company in town, senior in terms of years. Unless we get a few solid IPOs, New York City has not really arrived on the tech scene. Until then we should brag about our subway instead.

Ben Horowitz: Why Andreessen Horowitz Invested In FourSquare

Dennis not only created the vision for the company, but for the entire product category. Beyond that, he is very clearly the thought leader in the market. This is not at all surprising as he has been working on the problem for a decade and has highly refined his thinking through that period. ...... . He’s the kind of leader that great technical minds will be excited to follow: visionary, righteous, and competent. I am really excited to work with Dennis to help him on his path from being a great leader to a great Chief Executive of an incredibly important company. ...... at Foursquare is growing faster than Twitter did at this stage. ......Dennis and team have identified over a dozen different dimensions of the Foursquare product that must interact with each other in precisely optimal ways to achieve user delight. Years and years of research and sweat equity went into cracking the code, and the results are magical. ....... over 4.6B people have mobile phones and there are 1.7B people on the Internet. Already, over 200M people worldwide have smart phones and that number is headed north fast. ...... , major brands such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Zagat, Bravo TV, Starbucks, C-SPAN, Marc Jacobs and over 10,000 businesses are currently working with Foursquare to build customer loyalty and drive traffic. Not many companies have their users turn into their sales force, and it’s definitely a good sign that this is happening around Foursquare.

This Is Not Happening: King Dennis
The FourSquare Appeal For Me
FourSquare Must Cut A Deal With Yahoo
FourSquare Office, Dropio Technology
4:16 PM @ FourSquare
Selling FourSquare Would Be A Mistake, Partnering Would Be Genius
The Foursquare Rap: Badges Like Us
Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown
Dennis Crowley: I Underestimated Him
Happy Social Media Day.

OLPC Tablet

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Seth Godin, Jack Dorsey, Marc Andreessen

Monday, April 05, 2010

Andreessen, Conway, Hornik

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Fat Can Work, But Lean More Often Does

Ben Horowitz: The Case For The Fat StartUp

There are only two priorities for a start-up: Winning the market and not running out of cash. Running lean is not an end..... Sometimes running fat is the right thing to do.....Running fat meant that I laid off zero software engineers so that we could keep on investing in our technology, find our product/market fit, and build a lasting technological advantage..... the only thing worse for an entrepreneur than start-up hell (bankruptcy) is start-up purgatory..... Start-up purgatory occurs when you don’t go bankrupt, but you fail to build the No. 1 product in the space.

Fred Wilson: Being Fat Is Not Healthy

Ben and his partner Marc Andreessen. They have started and built multiple successful businesses and all I do is write checks...... I have never, not once, been successful with an investment in a company that raised a boatload of money before it found traction and product market fit with its primary product.....The very best investments that I have been involved in established product market fit before raising a lot of money. That's how Geocities did it. That's how Twitter did it. That's how Zynga did it..... they had significant user or customer adoption before ramping up hiring and spend..... it is very hard to be nimble and quick when you have hundreds (or even dozens) of engineers and other employees....Ben explains that Loudcloud raised $350mm in four rounds of financing (including an IPO) in the first 15 months of its life. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz can do that. Most of you can not.

Albert Wegner: The Sui Generis Startup

There are extremely few people in the world that can raise money for super high burn businesses on the strength of their vision and reputation.

Ben Horowitz: The Revenge Of The Fat Guy

Fred is one of my favorite VCs .... Product market fit isn’t a one-time, discrete point in time that announces itself with trumpet fanfares....Some companies achieve primary product market fit in one big bang. Most don’t, instead getting there through partial fits, a few false alarms, and a big dollop of perseverance..... I show below that Fred himself didn’t realize that Loudcloud had achieved product market fit even though we had...... We had to rebuild completely and would ultimately find product market fit in a different set of markets altogether....... the best markets are usually the ones in which competition is fierce because the opportunity is big...... Twitter (one of Fred’s brilliant investments) ..... Twitter is more exceptional than Loudcloud or Opsware..... Marc had moved on to found Ning and I was the CEO who nearly ran Loudcloud into the wall.

The real answer to this debate is there is no one size fits all. Fat or thin is right depending on what business cycle the economy is going through, depends on what stage the startup is in, depends on what the eventual size of its market and the startup's share of that market ends up being. There can only be so many Googles, and so many Facebooks. Most startups end up being neither and still succeeding. You can absolutely make the case for fat, but overall it is the lean startup that wins. Fat is few and far between. Some of the fat ones might be some of the biggest winners, but they will still be a numerical minority, a super minority. So if it is about betting, I'd bet on lean. Especially for early stage, definitely go lean. But a startup can start lean and go fat later. There is no one formula.

Loudcloud/Opsware is clearly a fat success story, but that does not make it the norm. The number of lean success stories far outnumber the fat success stories.

Ben and Fred come across as two large size figures in the tech industry who both have much respect for each other. That makes this debate extra interesting. There is this with-all-due-respect deference from both sides. You could argue this whole debate was masterminded by two heavyweights to pay compliments to each other.

Both are right. There is no one formula. The disagreement is in nuances. Ben has done fat well. Fred has done lean well, and many, many times. Can't argue with track records of success. Or maybe you can. Hence the blog posts and counter blog posts.

Ben saying "Twitter is more exceptional than Loudcloud or Opsware" had me chuckling. The statement is so very true.

Monday, January 04, 2010

I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla

Image via Wikipedia

I just accepted a Facebook friend request from Anu Shukla. I am guessing the friend request is a direct result of a long comment I left on TechCrunch earlier in the day: Zynga Investor Calls Scamville Debate Irrelevant And Unfair.

Fred Wilson is one of the pillars of the New York tech community, and he has been a brilliant investor for over a decade. I have lost count of how many times I came across a truly exciting company only to find out later that was one of Fred’s portfolio companies. If he were not a big investor, and only a blogger, he would still be considered a brilliant visionary.

As for Zynga, both Fred Wilson and Marc Andreessen are investors. I’d give an arm and a leg to belong in the same club as Marc Andreessen. Wouldn’t you?

I have not read all 22 of your “Scamville” posts. And I don’t pretend to have followed all the nuances of your argument.

And TechCrunch is my favorite blog by far. I read it more than I read any other news outlet of any kind, period. So I have respect for its founder and mascot.

You seem to suggest something murky might have been going on, but now, thanks to your work, much of that has been corrected. If that is the case, this story has had a happy ending.

As for Farmville the game, I can vouch for it personally. I have been an avid player for weeks. I never spent a single dime on it. And I am about to buy a million dollar villa there.

I had an email exchange with Mark Pincus only a few days back. I suggested he add a Farmers’ Market to Farmville. He said that was a good idea.

I am glad all three of you are around. What can I say?

By the way, I read those comments by Fred in the original at his blog before I saw them here. Good to know you and I sometimes end up at the same blog in some of the same comments sections.

My first email to Anu was standard. I have more than 130 lingering friend requests from people I don't know. My privacy settings on Facebook are lax. They are set to everyone. So you don't need to be my friend to be able to visit my full Facebook page. But if I don't know you, I am not accepting friend requests.

Hello Anu. Thanks for the friend request. I am open to online only friendships. But we are going to have to exchange a few emails, get to know each other, and become friends first. :-)

My second email to her a few minutes later:

Hey. Wait a minute. After I sent you the email, I googled up your name because it sounded kind of familiar. You are t-h-a-t Anu Shukla. Arrington dragged you into a controversy a few months back. I remember reading in real time.

LinkedIn

VentureBeat Interview

I am honored you should send a friend request my way. I am accepting it right away.

I am guessing this friend request came from a looong comment I left on TechCrunch earlier in the day. I am going to leave more such long comments in future! :-)

Hello friend.

And so that is that, I got myself a new friend.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

The PayCheckr Promise

Allan Hoving showed up in the comments section of this blog post: New York Times, Don't Die, Live. Maintaining my good blogger practices, I replied to his comment. We moved from the comments sections to email to the phone to a three way with someone on his team. Some of his demo round people who had gone to sleep came back from the dead.

I have ended up with an arrangement with PayCheckr that leaves plenty of room for my primary startup, and my three active blogs. There is the promise of creating major value with the button, but then there are also the learning opportunities.

Allan took me to a media conference along the L line near the Apple store. The famed NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen was the star attraction. I got up to ask a question.

Image via CrunchBase

The team has been telecommuting for the most part. Skype works great for conference calls. And of course there are meetings, with investors, potential partners. Allan is a big picture person. He is the visionary type.

I think PayCheckr is after something big. News, if anything, is more important than ever before. News is not dying, it is thriving like never before. But newspapers are dropping like flies. The blogosphere is expanding like the universe after the Big Bang. Somewhere in there is big money for publishers small and large. That is what PayCheckr is betting on. Money is going to be made.

Image via Wikipedia

PayCheckr is a good thing for me to get involved in on the side. I have three active blogs and two startups. My involvement with PayCheckr is good for my own startup: JyotiConnect Inc..

What we have out there is PayCheckr demo. We are working on PayCheckr 1.0. I am hoping PayCheckr 3.0 is a button that an entity like the New York Times would want to put on its site.

What could be PayCheckr's exit strategy? One would be to get the button on 10 million

Image via CrunchBase

blogs and sell it off for 10 million dollars. But then the MySpace guys sold MySpace for $500 million and Rupert Murdoch, in weeks, turned around and got Google to pay him $900 million to be allowed to serve ads on the MySpace property. Why did not the founders cut that deal?

Steve Outing: PayCheckr: the ‘ShareThis’ for donation, pay options

As author of this blog, I’d love to have lots of options for readers to send a few cents (or dollars!) my way if they like my writing or find value in it. But this blog could easily get overwhelmed with donation graphics from all the different services! ........ I’ve been looking for the solution, which is an obvious one: a ShareThis-like widget that aggregates all the solutions for payment and/or donation. The first such solution appears to be PayCheckr........ I’ve been looking for someone to come up with something like this, and PayCheckr founder Allan Hoving appears to be the first. Somehow he evaded my radar, since minOnline gave the fledgling service a write-up in late July.

Steve Smith:

“We have customized everything else [online], why not let us choose how to pay for it?” Hoving says. ...... the button is designed to aggregate the monetization opportunities a site already uses and let the visitor decide how they want to
Image via CrunchBase
remunerate the owner. ....... “We may be the delightful, easy-to-use interface between the publisher and the reader,” Hoving says. “We make the introduction and then get out of the way. Another way is to get more involved in transactions and perhaps fulfillments.” ....... At the very least, PayCheckr could be a clearinghouse and analytics engine for monetization opportunities. ...... Hoving has worked in a variety of magazine positions over the years at New York, Rolling Stone and Thomson Financial.

Netizen is the very first blog that put the PayCheckr button on. Let that be noted. History got made.

PayCheckr - Keeping what's read in the black
PayCheckr.com (PayCheckr) on Twitter
PayCheckr
Netizen: PayCheckr Potential
Netizen: PayCheckr: Bringing Money Into Blogging?
PayCheckr: Let 'Em Pay! Any Way They Like :: MinOnline
#hashtags - paycheckr
PayCheckr: Let Em Pay! Any Way They Like :: MinOnline
Twitter / PayCheckr.com: @Mediabistro @NiemanLab @T ...
paycheckr.com - Steve Outing - FriendFeed
USER-CENTRIC ONLINE REVENUE MODEL (pat. pend.) « PayCheckr
PayCheckr: This content is sponsored by PayCheckr.com
Allan Hoving - FriendFeed
Yes, News Sites Are Facing A Crisis, But Aggregators Aren't The ...
Mark Cuban Is a Big Fat Idiot—News Will Stay Free
Flickr: ahoving's Photostream
The death of snail mail & Sunday papers « BuzzMachine
Allan_Hoving on HuffingtonPost
digiday:DAILY - FT Editor Finds "Inexorable" Revenue Model
Raise Your Hand If You Think Media People Have a Future

The PayCheckr button is a piece of real estate that will increase in value as online publishing steps up to the plate, and as the button itself morphs and makes itself valuable and easy to use for publishers and bloggers in general. The challenge is to benefit from the first mover advantage but also spring forth the muscle and finesse of latecomers. It is going to be a wild ride, that's for sure.

Netizen: The First Blog To Place The PayCheckr Button
The PayCheckr Promise
PayCheckr Potential
PayCheckr: Bringing Money Into Blogging?

Monday, July 13, 2009

Blog Carnival: Venture Capital

July: Netizen Blog Carnival Month

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