Netizen: Union Square Ventures

Showing posts with label Union Square Ventures. Show all posts

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Chris Dixon On Twitter: Not Impressive

Chris Dixon is a great entrepreneur and investor, and he has a great blog (it's on my blogroll), but his latest post on Twitter I did not find all that impressive. The guy comes across as high on diligence, not so high on vision.

This morning when I showed up at AVC.com for my morning coffee - I am not much of a coffee drinker, by the way, beer and coffee are strictly social for me - Fred Wilson had mentioned Chris Dixon. Obviously the two have a mutual admiration thing going on.

Fred Wilson: Narratives Over Numbers
Chris Dixon: Size Markets Using Narratives, Not Numbers

And what's up with bloggers who flash this road sign on their old posts? "Comments for this page are closed." I don't do it, I don't get it. It is not like your blog post can not be found a few weeks later. Unless you are someone who makes a point to read every comment that was ever left at your blog. That might be Fred's rationale behind flashing that road sign. I don't flash it. I use my Disqus dashboard to manage my comments. It probably helps that I don't get all that many. Looks like Fred and Chris have a high class problem to have: many, too many comments.

Chris was already on my blogroll. He does have a swell blog. But this attention from Fred made sure he got promoted to the A1 section on my blogroll. These are bloggers that if they post something new, I have to go read it if I spot it. There are too many white males in that section. And a disproportionate number of Indians, but that is understandable.

Fred and Chris should have been there when they ran me out of the Sun building: Presenting At The Dot Com Hatchery. I came from the narrative angle, and they came from the not-ready-for-prime-time, the-guy-does-not-have-numbers angle.

Anyways, so I am thinking, I have not been to Chris Dixon's blog in a while, let me go look at some fresh stuff. And I found this.

Chris Dixon: Twitter And Third-Party Twitter Developers

Some of the things Chris says are unbelievable.

Real Time Is Real Time, Today Or Last Year
Twitter Has To Scale The Signals
Twitter Does The Deed: Ads
If The Tweet Is The Atom, What Is Location?
Twitter Acquires Tweetie: The Drama
Twitter Need Get Work Done
Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

Twitter is perhaps - not perhaps, it is - the most talked about company at my blog. That is why I think I would be a great addition to the Union Square Ventures team: Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying. Twitter is the best investment Fred ever made, in my opinion.

This is the Twitter narrative: Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter. Either you get it or you don't get it. If I were to write that blog post today, I'd probably add FourSquare at the end. But I will admit I did not see FourSquare coming. I was at FourSquare's demo at the NY Tech MeetUp I believe in March 2009. I remember not being impressed. Although I made a point to say hello to the Indian looking guy Naveen, who sensed it and was not impressed.

Fred Wilson imagined a Twitter like service before he actually came across Twitter, and it was slightly different from what he had imagined, it was better than what he had imagined, it was a case of reality being stranger than fiction. But scientists knew of Pluto, before they actually pinned it down. Fred Wilson and Esther Dyson are visionaries. Every time I get to meet Esther she makes my day. And I have met her at a few different NY Tech MeetUps. I don't think she knows me, but I could care less. The first time I saw her, I immediately recognized her, I could not believe it was her I was seeing. I thought the NY Tech MeetUp was for mere mortals like myself.

Location (Dennis Crowley: I Underestimated Him)
Random Connections
The Inbox

This is what I am looking at for the first half of this year. I guess this could go on for all of this year, and maybe even some of next year, but I don't feel confident projecting too far ahead. 2010 is definitely location's buzz year. Next year the space will have matured and receded from the headlines a little.

So coming back to Chris Dixon and Twitter.

Twitter having sent mixed signals over the past few years..... somehow Twitter had convinced the world they were going to “let a thousand flowers bloom” – as if they were a non-profit out to save the world, or that they would invent some fantastic new business model that didn’t encroach on third-party developers...... Twitter has yet to figure out a business model..... Twitter search will monetize poorly ..... Twitter’s move into mobile clients and hints about a more engaging website suggest they may be trying to mimic Facebook’s display ad model. ...Facebook’s ad growth is being driven largely by companies like Zynga who are in turn monetizing users with social games and virtual goods..... Facebook’s model depends on owning “eyeballs,” which is entirely contradictory to the pure API model Twitter has promoted thus far. ....Hopefully Twitter “fills holes” through acquisitions instead of internal development. ..... but on the product development front has been underwhelming ....Now that Twitter seems to be mimicing Facebook...Facebooker Ivan Kirigin tweeted yesterday: “I suppose when your competition is making huge mistakes, you should just stfu.”

Other than the fact that this guy is running a few days behind, obviously he has not blogged since Twitter made its big announcement. That is curious because the Twitter announcement was the biggest announcement in tech this past week. As far as I am concerned, the Twitter announcement is bigger than the iPad release. Twitter affects and will affect far more people. Steve Jobs, the Pied Piper. (The iPad Is No Laptop Killer)

Twitter has not sent any mixed signals. There is an almost total overlap between the Twitter path and the Google path. First build the product. Worry about monetization later. Just like there is a Google ecosystem (and this blog - Netizen - is part of it), there will continue to be a Twitter ecosystem. But Google bought Blogger and YouTube. Twitter will make its purchases. Twitter never pretended to be a non profit. If there are people who ever thought Twitter was a non profit, that can't be Twitter's fault.

Twitter search will monetize poorly? Chris, Twitter is second only to Google in the search arena. That has to ring a bell.

Twitter could not imitate Facebook even if it wanted to. Google could not become Facebook. Facebook can not become Twitter. Facebook and Twitter can add location, but FourSquare will thrive. Vision 101.

Facebook has not in earnest started to monetize. Their ad model will rely on the social graph and the social interactions. In a sense Facebook has not yet done what Twitter has done already. (Facebook's Ad Space Is Different)

The "API model" has been about extending Twitter's reach and making tweets fundamental to the web experience. It has been part of product development. It was never a business model.

It is not a choice between buy or build. Twitter has to do both. Each situation is slightly unique. My suggestion has been to go for an IPO, and then go on a buying spree: Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO.

Twitter deserves credit for Twitter.com, but it also deserves credit for the Twitter ecosystem. I could complain Google did not give me Gmail on day one, or I could say thanks, they finally did it.

How is Twitter mimicking Facebook? The Facebook Ivan dude is making even less sense. Twitter is in the best shape it has ever been after its Chirp announcements. And there are people who think Twitter is imploding? Wet dreams.

We need to talk some resonance sense into this guy.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Managing Al, Brad, Fred: An Opportunity To Jump For

"I am interested in understanding why you chose the title General Manager. It does not seem that you need one person to manage the small and largely self-motivated team."

Union Square Ventures: We Are Hiring "we have envisioned an Investment Analyst and a General Manager of the Union Square Ventures Network"

Albert Wenger, Brad Burnham (@BradUSV) (Tumblr), Fred Wilson.

Fred Wilson: Talent Overload

Fred Wilson and USV first put out a post weeks back saying Farewell Andrew Parker, or something along those lines. And someone commented, in all earnesty, who died? He did not say who died, he said I came over here huffing and puffing hoping noone had died or anything like that. Oh no, Andrew is thankfully alive and well, Fred had to respond.

And now this even more earnest comment on the management position. These two comments have so far stood out as the hiring process rolls on at USV.

Albert Wenger
Brad Burnham
Fred Wilson

Andrew Parker
Dorsey Stinson
Eric Friedman

USV Investments

The USV Focus

Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

On Disqus And Disqussions

Fred Wilson's blog post today is about comments: Some Thoughts On Comments. And my blog runs a real danger of ending a satellite blog to the AVC blog. (Kidding, of course) Yesterday I put out a reply blog post, this is another. (The Inbox Could See New Life This Year) Usually I stick to Fred's comments sections.

I think there might be a tinge of self-consciousness I might be feeling after having applied for a Union Square Ventures job. (Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying) More important, I am thinking new thoughts.

I have complimented Fred's being a wonderful blogger several times before. He is my favorite solo blogger. And his comments sections are a great hangout place. If I get the USV job, two of the things I might want to do would be (a) produce a 30 minute video of Fred every week, and (b) organize offline get-togethers of the AVC community. It might not be monthly, but it would be a good idea to have them a few times a year. I think I appreciate the important role Fred's blog plays in his management challenges. Talking through a blog post might be a great way to communicate to some of the portfolio companies, not to say super efficient. And it does not put them on the spot. It is an open platform. There is a free rolling comments section that chugs along.

I made the observation a few days back that AVC collects more comments per post than most posts on TechCrunch, and that is remarkable considering the huge disparity in traffic levels between the two blogs. And there is no concept of The Regulars at TechCrunch.

So, Disqus

I got excited about Disqus before I learned it was one of Fred's portfolio companies. I have to tell you about what Disqus means to me. I use Disqus more often than I use so many of the better known social media platforms. I am not going to name and shame them. And Disqus is frankly half the weight at the AVC blog. Fred reads every comment anyone ever leaves at his blog. I think that is really something. But that is also a big part of the reason why there is a sense of community at AVC. Once in a while someone will show up and do a drive-by shooting, but the community has learned to take care of itself. The Regulars feel protective of each other. Dissent is okay, even celebrated, but slander is not. But I come from the free speech before decency school of thought. So I am okay with a little bit of background radiation.

Disqus Next

What could Disqus do to take itself to the next level? That is a tough question for me because the number one item on my Disqus agenda is to see its wider adoption. I wish every blog I ever visited had Disqus. I know of a lot of people who will not even bother leaving comments at a blog if it does not have Disqus. Mashable has Disqus, TechCrunch does not. I think Disqus has been part of the reason Mashable has done so well so fast.

How do you better organize the 100 comments a blog post might accumulate? I don't know. My blog does not have that problem right now. And although AVC regularly accumulates over 100 comments per blog post, for me that has not been a problem. I usually end up reading all of them. And when the intent is to read them all, chronological works best. You start from the first comment and end up with the last.

But I can see why you might want to read only 10 out of 100 comments and ask Disqus to figure out what those 10 should be.

One could be the like button. Comments that have been liked bubble up to the top. The one with the most likes are at the very top.

Two would be the option to follow people on Disqus. So if I follow Fred Wilson on Disqus, his comments show up first no matter where I might be in the blogosphere. Or you could integrate with Facebook Connect. My Facebook friends show up first.

Three would be a way for a blogger to decide on the hierarchy of his or her commenters. The default setting might be that the commenters who have left the most comments overall bubble to the top. Or a blogger would have the option to give stars to his/her top commenters. These are the five people who are my top commenters. When they comment, place them at the top.

An odd one would be length. Long comments rise to the top.

Disqus Enterprise

This is where I smell money. Say I am a small business. And I want Disqus to be my primary customer service software. What will you do for me? One option to have would be for the comments to not get displayed at all. I want to see the feedback. Maybe I don't want the entire world to see the feedback. How about comments that are tied to specific transactions? What if you could see the five items I bought from you before I left you that snarky comment? Or what if Disqus would read and categorize the comments for me? Great product, thanks, should not be in the same category as, you need to change the color scheme of your front page. And there should be a quick way to respond.

A lot of Google customer service is Q&A pages. Disqus should make it possible for any business small or big to roll that out. Let customers be each other's customer care for the most part. Let them answer each other's questions for the most part. Make repeat questions unnecessary.

Disqus The Savior

Blogs and sites that routinely get thousand plus comments per post need help, and they need help now. Find me the 10 comments out of that pile of thousand that I might want to read and possibly reply to.

Disqus, A Microblogging Platform

Considering I use it so much, I might as well call it like it is.

New York Times: News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments
Tereza
Kid Mercury

On another note, I was just thinking, if Geocities has been Fred's best deal so far, that was a M&A. Yahoo bought Geocities. If Twitter is going to be Fred's first IPO, I am now even more excited about the idea. :-)

Twitter is the best deal Fred ever did. And how he did it is a remarkable story.

I was also thinking, if you have 28 companies in your portfolio, you probably work extra hard to make sure the not so star companies do feel the love. It also helps that companies that will bring the biggest returns need the least hand holding.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying

Fred Wilson: We Are Hiring At Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures: We Are Hiring

Intra-Portfolio Evangelist. Now that is a title that could work for me. I could argue I have already been doing that for USV for free. I believe Vint Cerf is Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. (Vint Cerf, Craig Mundie, Steve Wozniak)

Twitter Acquires Tweetie: The Drama
Twitter Need Get Work Done
Fred Wilson's Gift To Me
Net Neutrality Is The Internet's DNA
Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem
Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea
Startups And Immigrants
Fat Can Work, But Lean More Often Does
Who Is Andrew Parker?
Measuring Your Twitter Influence
Facebook And Twitter Suck When It Comes To Searching Their Own Sites
Tumblr: Casey, Nina, David, Fred
Silicon Valley Vs. New York City
Fred Wilson's Insight
Fred Wilson: VC
The Foursquare Rap: Badges Like Us
Location! Location! Location!
Fred Wilson: A VC
Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever
Mark Zuckerberg, Mike Arrington
Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown
Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising
Dennis Crowley: I Underestimated Him
Finally, Twitter Ads
My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp
Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO
Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google
Union Square
TechCrunch Has Linked To A Blog That Stole My Material
Bye Bye Geocities
Fred Wilson
Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas
Facebook Landgrab: A Friday Midnight Call
Facebook And Mashable: Social Media And Social Media Blog
Facebook's Ad Space Is Different
Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds

My LinkedIn Page. (Email: paramendra at gmail dot com)

..... the successful candidates will spend a couple of years with us and then move on to a start up.... the GM of the USV Network will focus primarily on supporting our portfolio of 28 web services companies. ....... Because of our focused approach, many of our portfolio companies face similar challenges as they work to create and sustain user engagement, recruit talent, build relationships with partners, or design, code, and operate web services at scale. So it's no surprise that our portfolio companies are learning from each other. We have tried to facilitate that learning by hosting meetups and mailing lists, but we believe that we can do so much more. .......build on our early work to create a useful and sustainable connection between the portfolio companies. Think of it as a community manager for the USV portfolio. The community is small, and private, but populated by people and companies who are having a big impact on the web...... Build on the current platform of mailing lists and meetups by identifying and implementing social tools and services that create value for USV portfolio companies.....Identifying best practices in areas like social media, search, and online marketing and sharing those in the network.....Helping the portfolio companies recruit and hire great employees.....Organizing events like the annual portfolio company CEO summit...... Fostering connection online and offline between the functional disciplines (marketing, sales, finance, etc) in each portfolio company....... Strong interpersonal skills ..... Proven ability to foster communication and cooperation among diverse individuals online and offline...... Hands on experience with light weight tools such as Wikis, mailing lists, etc...... Several years of management experience in flat, matrix, or loosely coupled organizations...... At Union Square Ventures, we basically do two things. We try to make the best investments we can and then we do everything we can to help our portfolio companies succeed....... At the end of the day, we will hire two people who will help us make investments and support the portfolio. If you think your skills would be a better fit in a slightly different alignment, feel free to make that point....... very important to us that the candidates for these positions share our conviction about the transformational potential of the web......be prepared to forcefully defend thoughtful positions on potential investments, but to also consider carefully the positions of others and to be intellectually honest and open to persuasion....... "net native" .....

Ideally, I would do one year, but I could do two. But two would be max.

Vision and group dynamics are my major strengths.

I got myself elected student body president at the number one liberal arts college in the (Bible Belt) South within six months of landing as an international student. When I landed I could not have told you the cultural differences between Kentucky and California. I spoke so fast, people asked me if I was from New York. One friend who voted for me later told me, "I did not understand a word you said, but you sounded so excited I figured you might do something, so I voted for you." They had to change the constitution so I could run as a freshman.

In 1999 I was one of the founding members of Chaitime.com that raised 25 million dollars before it succumbed to the nuclear winter. We were trying to be the premier South Asian online community. We had offices in Philadelphia, Toronto, London, Mumbai.

There is a concrete mathematical theory called the butterfly effect. A butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon forest could be the reason a cyclone hit Bangladesh. What happened in Nepal in April 2006, January-February 2007, and February 2008, and more recently in February 2009 were political cyclones. I was the butterfly flapping my wings in New York City. In April 2006, over a period of 19 days, about eight million people out of the country's 27 million came out into the streets to shut the country down completely to force a dictator out.

And I see things. I got vision.

I am a Net Native.

I don't live in America. I live on the Net. I am a Netizen. America is Europe, the Internet is America. I said that over a decade ago.
I did Nobel Peace Prize quality work a few years back for the democracy and social justice movements in Nepal. I did my work entirely online. Nepal is the poorest country outside of Africa.
I am the second richest farmer in my neighborhood on Farmville. Was the richest. A few weeks back someone with more XP than me befriended me, but he has a few weeks at best.
I am more than a Net Native. I am a Net Entrepreneur. I don't want to just live online. Online is where work is. After USV it is a startup for me, my own startup.
I am one of the top 100 people in NYC on Twitter.
I am all over social media. (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Buzz, Tumblr, Blog: Netizen)
I was early on Geocities. I was also early on Hotmail, Flickr, LinkedIn, Friendster, Gmail, Wave, among the other obvious names.

"If you think your skills would be a better fit in a slightly different alignment, feel free to make that point."

I think I am a great fit for the Intra-Portfolio Evangelist position. Other than what you have already mentioned, and what you have mentioned does cover what I am about to say, but I'd like to go ahead and specify nevertheless.

I want to make a case that Twitter needs to go public before Facebook, and it needs to do so this year, earlier the better. I have a few ideas on how FourSquare can cement its number one position in the location space. I think it is very important USV get into Chatroulette early and help it cement its number one position in the random connections space. And I want to help find the next FourSquare, just be on the lookout.

I hope this is not a salary only job. I hope you can add elements that give it an entrepreneurial feel. I am assuming there is a decent six figure salary, but that there is also some kind of a performance-based percentage cut of sorts. I'd be eager to suggest something on that pertaining to Twitter. And I hope you are not too rigid on office hours. Working long hours is second nature to me. But this job feels pretty citywide to me, and also bi-coastal. And I expect to be reading a ton of books on the clock in preparation for some specific projects I have in mind. A Kindle as a business expense item?

I am excited. What can I say? I feel like Bill Clinton when he was applying for colleges. The dude applied to just one school. Georgetown was in DC, it was a good school, and it had a strong foreign service program. I hope you hire me. Summer is absolutely beautiful in New York.

This video is from 2005.

LinkedIn tells me all five USV people are circle two to me: Fred Wilson (3 shared connections), Brad Burnham (2), Albert Wenger (4), Eric Friedman (2), and Andrew Parker (5 shared connections). Looking forward to bringing all of them into circle one.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Twitter Acquires Tweetie: The Drama

New York Times, April 9: Twitter Acquires Atebits, Maker of Tweetie

Fred Wilson, an investor at Union Square Ventures and a longtime Twitter board member, stoked those fears in a blog post in which he wrote that many third-party Twitter services, including mobile clients like Tweetie’s, are features that Twitter should offer itself......Twitter, which raised $100 million in September, has the cash to go on a shopping spree..... the most popular mobile Twitter client

Evan Williams, April 9: Evan William's Message To Twitter Developers

“It’s a question of what should be left up to the ecosystem and what should be created on the platform.” Twitter will continue to buy or develop apps and features it needs, even if third-party developers already provide them, Mr. Williams said.

Fred Wilson, April 7: The Twitter Platform's Inflection Point
Netizen, April 7: Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

When Fred wrote his blog post, it was one blogger blogging away: The Twitter Platform's Inflection Point. That is what he has said, and of course I believe him. He vastly underestimated the reaction. The Silicon Alley Insider called it a "bombshell." UK's Telegraph was talking about it. GigaOm was all excited. There was a post on TechCrunch about it. There was some major buzz at several lesser blogs.

I really appreciated Zemanta - one of Fred's portfolio companies - during this drama. I put out my echo blog post within hours, and Zemanta gave me a good idea of all the dust Fred's blog post had raised: Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem.

Of course Twitter acquired Summize a long time ago, so it is not like Tweetie is Twitter's very first acquisition.

I have said to Fred the 2010s will be his best decade yet as a VC. I have said that in his comments sections.

He was offended - rightly so - by some of the things that got said about him by inference on TechCrunch back in December, basically that he was an investor in the social game Farmville, which is a scam game, hence the term scamville. (Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising) That is like saying FourSquare is designed to help burglars rob your homes. By the way that is also something TechCrunch said. (Location! Location! Location!)

I am all for free speech, but Farmville and FourSquare just so happen to be cutting edge web properties. You can't be the top tech blog if you don't realize that. Traffic levels can not take long to vanish.

Farmville is the media savior, it is not the iPad, and FourSquare is the next Twitter, that cutting edge. (The iPad Is No Laptop Killer)

What I have also said to Fred is expect nastier things said about you in the future. It is the nature of being a public figure of sorts. It is like Hillary said about her husband in 1991 towards the end of an event, "He still does not realize they can't leave until he does." The Gotham Gal might have something to say.

It is a man bit dog impulse of the media. They will sometimes say it even where is no man around, no dog around.

Fred's entire family blogs. There is a section on my BlogRoll called Fred's Family. It has been up for months.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Fred Wilson's Gift To Me

Getting To Know Fred Wilson

I first came across the AVC.com blog. Frankly I thought the name was cheesy. VCs are not supposed to have blogs, I thought. VCs are supposed to be inaccessible, working in smoke filled rooms. A blog is the opposite of a smoke filled room.

Then I started visiting the blog once in a while, after having bookmarked it and not visited for months. I started liking it. It was a decent blog. It was interesting. The blog posts touched on many current topics of interest to me.

Then I started liking it a lot.

I got excited about Zemanta and Disqus before I realized they were Fred Wilson's portfolio companies. That made me respect the guy. It was only a matter of time before I realized he was an investor in Twitter, and sat on the Twitter Board. That was a big nugget to have come across in 2009. 2009 was Twitter's year. During the first half everyone was talking about Twitter. The icing on the cake was to realize no, Twitter did not pitch Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson pitched Twitter.

I like vision people. Clearly Fred Wilson was a visionary.

I wish there were a few top tech entrepreneurs who were as avid bloggers as Fred Wilson is. That would be a triumph. I wish all of the very top tech entrepreneurs were avid bloggers. Not even Kevin Rose is, and he is not exactly the topmost entrepreneur. Fred Wilson kind of stands out in the tech industry that way.

And then I realized Geocities also had been part of Fred's portfolio. I was a Geocities guy back in the days, an avid user. I was sad when Yahoo shut down Geocities recently. Geocities was the original online community.

Fred Wilson did not need to prove to me no more. This cat's got something going on, I thought.

Fred Wilson's Insight
Happy Holi
Fred Wilson: VC
Fred Wilson: A VC
Fred Wilson

AVC, Not For Me

If you are an early stage entrepreneur, you are, of course, looking to find the VC types. For a while I thought of pitching Fred. We even exchanged a few emails. If he was not going to come in himself, he was going to lead me to some people. But I was too early stage. Like too. And I did not articulate myself well.

Then I was resigned to the fact I just don't fall in his domain expertise zone. He does "web services." I am absolutely not in the dot com space.

But that did not change the fact that he was a visionary in the tech industry, and he had become my favorite solo blogger. I very rarely emailed him, but when I did, he replied. That was and is a big deal.

Maybe A VC For Me

But I was not going to give up. You can't bemoan not having a 200 billion dollar tech company in New York City, and stay stuck in the dot com space. I took a friendly swing at Fred Wilson in a blog post. When I started work on that blog post, I had no intention to do so. But a few paragraphs later I was doing it. What the heck, I thought. Tell it like it is. (Fred Wilson's Insight)

Fred Wilson's Gift To Me

Finally it happened. Fred Wilson gave his gift to me. It happened in his comments section to this blog post: Yochai Benkler On TheBroadband Plan. Yes, he is open to going beyond the dot com space, he will invest in broadband if the spectrum is opened up. Opening up the spectrum is a political battle. I am well suited for a political fight like that one. Taking a singular focus to a revolutionary proposition. I could do that. I am itching for the fight.

My Comment:

"There isn't enough competition on the access side of the Internet, both wireline and broadband. The rest of the Internet stack is hypercompetitive and is innovating at a mile a minute. But in access, we have monopolies who go at whatever speed suits them. There's nothing pushing them to go faster."

Finally, for the first time, Fred Wilson and I are "talking."

(1) Hardware (2) Software (3) Connectivity.

Paul Allen wanted MSFT to do both hardware and software. Bill Gates vetoed that. He said no, only software. He was right. But by now the biggest virgin territories are in sector three: Connectivity. That is where the big fortunes stand to be made. Hardware and software will hum along, but the biggest disruptions stand to be made in sector three. The dot com space is kinda saturated by comparison, although that space will always stay fertile because the human mind never satiates. But sector three is where big things will be done in the next push.

Fred Wilson's Comment:

i think you may be right, but i am scared of the capital costs involved. if wireless spectrum was dregulated, i might get interested

My Comment:

"....if wireless spectrum was dregulated...."

That has to be the primary push.

That is all the opening I need. This fight is not entirely as complicated as what happened in Nepal in April 2006. (The First Major Revolution Of The 21st Century Happened In Nepal) This tech entrepreneurship challenge speaks to my political strengths.

My company wants to bring hundreds of millions of new people online. Internet access is the voting right for this 21st century. Take me to the fight.

Andrew Parker

And then Andrew Parker happened out of the blue. I'd love to do a May 2010-May 2011 stint with Union Square Ventures. I think my startup will have covered more ground in three years with this stint than without it. I hope I get to do it: fingers crossed.

Who Is Andrew Parker?

Fred Wilson (financier) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Twitter Employees Cheerlead Top Investor's Bombshell Post...‎

Net Neutrality Is The Internet's DNA
Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem
Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea
Startups And Immigrants
Fat Can Work, But Lean More Often Does
Measuring Your Twitter Influence
The New York City Subway
Broader Broadband
Tumblr: Casey, Nina, David, Fred
Broad Broadband
Silicon Valley Vs. New York City
The Foursquare Rap: Badges Like Us
Location! Location! Location!
An Immigrant Story For Brad Feld
Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown
Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising
I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

Measuring Your Twitter Influence
Who Is Andrew Parker?
Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea
Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever
Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO
My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp

Fred Wilson: The Twitter Platform's Inflection Point (My Comment)

"Twitter really should have had all of that when it launched or it should have built those services right into the Twitter experience."

There you go. That has been my point. Twitter needs to eat into its ecosystem. Windows did that. Bill Gates' last threat was he was going to incorporate antivirus software right into Windows. Good thing for Norton that he retired instead.

And Twitter needs to appeal more to the mainstream users. The first page is not welcoming for new users. For one, it is cluttered. Tumblr could teach here.

One way to eat into the ecosystem is to go on a buying spree. For that you need money. You get that money by going public. (Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO)

You should hire me and put me to work on this. (Who Is Andrew Parker?)

Don't get me wrong. Blogger remains my favorite social media platform (My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp) And my enthusiasm for Twitter is well documented. (Measuring Your Twitter Influence) It is not possible I lack respect for Evan Williams. But I think I can help.

Hire me for a year, and let this be my first project. :-) Seriously.

10 years back a lot of people wanted to go online so they could get Hotmail. Twitter has to reach that level of appeal.

" I think the time for filling the holes in the Twitter service has come and gone."

True. But not true. 2009 was Twitter's year. True. 2010 is the year for location, random connections and the inbox, as I see it so far. That list might look different in six months, I don't know.

But Twitter could still do it. It needs to eat into its ecosystem.

Right now I feel like Bill Clinton felt when he was applying for colleges. The dude applied to just one college: Georgetown in DC. He wanted to be in DC, Georgetown was a good college, and it had a strong foreign service program. Right now when I have decided to get the first real job of my life and to postpone work on my startup by about a year, I find myself wanting to work at Union Square Ventures and no place else. The more I think about it, the more I want to do it. There are currents and counter currents of thoughts.

Fred Wilson is too big for me.
They might not even hire me.
They will definitely not hire me.
What am I thinking?

Some of the counter currents:

What if I end up being a VC in a year? That would be horror. I have enormous respect for VCs, but I don't want to be one. 30 years from now I want to be known for a company I created.
What if it feels like a corporate job? What if it is not entrepreneurial enough?
There must be holes in my abilities. There most definitely are if the idea is to find a photocopy of Andrew Parker. Andrew Parker's tumblog is definitely better than mine.

What I want.

I do want it, and I am going to do my best this month to try and get it. But I am not going to email Fred, although I have emailed him several times on frivolous topics like, well, Happy Holi Fred Wilson. (Happy Holi) If they want me, they will email me. If they get someone else, I will read about it on Fred's blog that I have taken to reading daily. His mantra: blog daily. My mantra: read daily.
Doing my best is to put out a series of blog posts at my blog. They are not asking for a resume, they are asking for a blog. That is insurance that this is going to feel like a startup, and not some ossified corporation.
Words like guru, don come to mind. Fred Wilson is a big shot who is hugely accessible. I mean, the guy has a blog that is so good he could be mistaken for a pro blogger.
I want a decent six figure salary.
Can I do 10-6? I don't need a lunch break. But I am not going to be happy working only 40 hours a week. I have that personality type that wants to work long hours. But I like flexibility in how I spend some of those hours. What is the USV version of Google's 20% time? Let me spend 20% of my time going to events in town and networking in the industry, hanging out with startup people.
Take Twitter public in 2010 before Facebook. I want that to be my first project. If I fail, I am just a guy with a six figure salary. If I succeed, I want a percentage. So if USV owns 10% of Twitter - I don't know what it owns, it is very likely less - I want to end up owning 1% of Twitter, something like that.
Invest in Chatroulette, help it avoid the Twitter mistakes, turn it into the leading Random Connections service.
Help take FourSquare to the next level.
Find the next FourSquare.
These are some of the things I would want to work on.
Andrew's title was Analyst. I want mine to be Junior Partner. He has a better tumblog than I do, but other than that I bring more to the table.
It might be a good idea to hire one a half people plus an intern. One would be me.
I have never had health insurance. Push ups have been my idea of health insurance so far. If I am hired, to me it is going to feel like Obama made Fred Wilson give me health insurance. Okay, okay, that sentence sounds convoluted, but I did put numerous hours into Obama 08. (Jupiter And Obama, Switching To Obama)
The tweet is to the web what the atom is to the universe. Twitter has to prove that. Twitter is lucky that there is no Gowalla around, but it sure needs to feel the time pressure.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Who Is Andrew Parker?

Blog Daily is Fred Wilson's mantra. Many people know him as a venture capitalist. I know him primarily as a blogger. He is my favorite solo blogger by far. So a few minutes back I showed up at his blog, and this is what I saw.

Fred Wilson: Bidding Andrew Goodbye

That blog post linked over to this one, also written by Fred Wilson.

Union Square Ventures: Bidding Goodbye To Andrew

By the time I was going through the comments at that blog post, I realized I was already following this guy on Tumblr without realizing he worked for Union Square Ventures. I found him through Nina who I found through Scoble.

Andrew Parker: ... Boston Bound, Leaving USV And Next Steps

Fred Wilson, July 2006: Looking For The Right Person
Brad Burnham, August 2006: Welcome Andrew Parker
Charlie O'Donnell, July 2006: Leaving Union Square Ventures: My Other Name Is An Avatar ....

Right now I am in a mood to do round 1 work for my startup part time while working a job. I have sent out a few feelers seeking a social media job of some kind. But that might feel like a deviation from my path. I am not aspiring to be a media guy, social or otherwise. This USV job might be a dream job for someone with my aspirations, but I am not sure they might go for me. And, curiously, I would like to start out by giving them some reasons why they should not hire me.

I am going to be working on my startup idea part time, on the side. I am not walking away from it.
I might stick around for about a year max. So if you are looking for someone who will be with you at least two years, I am not your guy. But when I leave it will be because I have decided to go full time with my startup, there will be no other reason. I'd give you a month's notice.
I don't have a good track record of putting up with authority. I have never really had a corporate job. Even a job has to feel entrepreneurial to me. Can't be a cog.
I am not a white male. There was this group photo somewhere I saw last year, or maybe before, it had all the top young tech entrepreneurs in town. The first thing I noticed was every single one of them was a white guy. I recognized only one, the MeetUp CEO Scott, a friend. Now that I also know Sam Lessin, the Dropio guy, I am pretty sure he was also in there. I have a pretty sophisticated understanding of race. I was one of Obama's earliest people in the city, and I got to become friends with many of the top Obama volunteers in town in all five boroughs, many of them white. But then I am used to not being part of groups with total cultural overlaps with me since I was 10. Makes me very individualistic as a result. I am big on personal space in my own way. In Nepal it was ethnicity in a boarding school environment - talk about The Other, in Kentucky it was race.

Some of the reasons I might like the job:

I a-m looking for a job. If I get it, round 1 feels like so much less pressure. I am not having to pay myself a salary, however low, through my startup. I might even save some money and pump that into my startup. I don't need much.
This would be a dream job.
Going to tech events in town is not cutting it for me no more. I need something stronger.
This USV experience might be the detox I need after a few years of hard core, cutting edge political work.
The tech startup ambience, the people you will meet, the expanded personal network.
Getting a better feel for the NY tech ecosystem.
Fred Wilson. If I so enjoy interacting with him at his blog, that enjoyment must be greater by so many degrees in person. This guy is as good as they come. In the world of movies, they have Scorsese. In the world of venture capital, they got AVC. This guy is a legend in the making. I have higher regard for him than VCs with more money than him. He is really good at what he does. He was born to be a VC. (Fred Wilson's Insight)
I am on the L line. They are on the L line. It only struck me a few days back that USV is perhaps named after Union Square. For the longest time I thought, so the Square is the square like in geometry, what is Union?
I like it that they are a small team. Three is the Google number. Three seems to be the USV number. Google works on the premise that three is as big as a team should get.
I absolutely am loving it that they are asking not for a resume but a blog. This blog will do it for them. Well then, here goes. You have this blog. And you can click over to all my social media presences from this blog itself. Give me a job, if not at least give me some page hits. :-) Best, make me an offer.

This is what I looked like when I showed up in town summer of 2005.

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