we'd really rather live in a world where Droid X and iPhone 4 hang out after work for drinks than one where they stab each other in their silicon hearts.
the Android platform, which is quickly catching up by adding powerful devices and galloping software updates. ..... Processing Power Tie .... Display & Resolution Winner: iPhone 4 ....... Storage Winner: Droid X ..... Camera & Multimedia Draw ...... Apple's device has a front-facing video camera for video calls (a feature missing on the Droid X), and you can purchase, for $4.99, iMovie for iPhone, simply the best mobile video editor seen so far (and exclusive to the iPhone 4). ....... Connectivity Winner: Droid X ...... iOS vs. Android Draw (So Far) ....... the problem with the Droid X is that it won't ship with the latest version of Android (2.2) on July 15 ...... A cool trick the Droid X will have, one not yet available on iOS, is Swype, a system that allows you to enter data on the software keyboard without lifting your finger off the screen. Swype is the default data-entry mode ...... A notable feature now present on the Droid X is noise cancellation technology, which is supposed to improve call quality by blocking other sounds around you except your voice. The iPhone 4 has two microphones, one of which is used for noise cancellation, while the Droid X boasts three.
Motorola's new Droid X should give iPhone 4 shoppers pause. It has a bigger screen, better camera, and the Verizon Wireless network backing it up. ...... The Droid X's 854 x 480 display is fully capable of playing HD content. Do those extra pixels matter? ..... The iPhone's battery is, of course, not accessible. ..... The real advantage the Droid X has over the iPhone 4 is its network. I have been both an AT&T and a Verizon Wireless customer for years. I can say that in my experience, Verizon's network is simply better. That means fewer dropped calls and more consistent data sessions for the Droid X. ...... The difference between AT&T's $25/mo for 2GB and Verizon's $30/mo for 5GB is enormous. ....It costs just $200 with a new contract, and offers nearly everything the iPhone 4 does -- all on a better network.
The 4.3-inch screen, the largest I've ever used, is nearly 25 percent bigger than the iPhone's. .... It can also do something cool that the iPhone can't: provide a Wi-Fi signal for nearby devices. ..... The Droid X's biggest advantage is that it runs on Verizon Wireless
Nokia’s N8 due this fall will challenge everyone with its 12 megapixel, oversize-sensor camera hardware. ..... both phones have much better graphics performance than previous models. You’ll no longer tap and wait. Or swipe and wait. ......
the iPhone's lack of expandability - neither a removable battery or an additional memory card; and its lack of support for Flash, which means that some Web sites (such as Hulu) don't work. .... The Evo 4G has a large 4.3-inch display, with an 800-by-480 resolution, and as a result, the phone is a lot larger than the iPhone 4. It has a variety of very nice features, including a front-facing camera for video conferencing and the ability to be used as a mobile hot-spot, sharing its Sprint connection with multiple computers over Wi-Fi. It also has an 8-megapixel camera, HDMI out, and a kickstand. But the standout feature is its support for the Wimax network, which is now available in a number of markets and coming to a lot more this fall.
I am supposed to be working on a few blog posts (To Iran, With Love (1)) for two of my favorite people in the tech community - Fred Wilson and Brad Feld - but I find my ways to procrastinate. I found myself on my Tumblr dashboard instead. Mostly I reblog, that is what I do on Tumblr. The editor in me comes out. So - hint, hint - I am a very good person to follow on Tumblr. Following me is like following 90 people minus the pain. And these 90 people are mostly active members of the tech community. So. Follow me, like Al Pacino says right before the best scene in my favorite movie Heat.
I came across an interesting post by KirkLove, on parenting. No, I don't know him, although he is a New Yorker. You are not supposed to know people on Tumblr. I personally know very few of the 90 plus people I follow on Tumblr.
But then I have never been a parent myself, although I grew up in a large, extended family environment - at the peak, I think perhaps four couples under one roof in a big house - and saw a l-o-t of parenting happen. That makes me an authority of sorts, I think. And that is not even counting the regular larger extended family get togethers - festivals, three day weddings - when you would have much noise and kids running all over the place.
Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so. This finding is surprisingly consistent, showing up across a range of disciplines. ........ five ruthless words: “Economically worthless but emotionally priceless.” ...... . “I don’t mean to idealize the lives of the Namibian women,” she says. “But it was hard not to notice how calm they were. They were beading their children’s ankles and decorating them with sienna, clearly enjoying just sitting and playing with them, and we’re here often thinking of all of this stuff as labor.” ...... especially true in middle- and upper-income families, which are far more apt than their working-class counterparts to see their children as projects to be perfected. (Children of women with bachelor degrees spend almost five hours on “organized activities” per week, as opposed to children of high-school dropouts, who spend two. ...... “Middle-class parents spend much more time talking to children, answering questions with questions, and treating each child’s thought as a special contribution. And this is very tiring work.” ....... According to Changing Rhythms of American Family Life—a compendium of data porn about time use and family statistics .......all parents spend more time today with their children than they did in 1975, including mothers, in spite of the great rush of women into the American workforce. ...... the abundance of choices—whether to have kids, when, how many—may be one of the reasons parents are less happy. ...... parents’ dissatisfaction only grew the more money they had, even though they had the purchasing power to buy more child care ..... “They’re a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit.” ...... When people wait to have children, they’re also bringing different sensibilities to the enterprise. They’ve spent their adult lives as professionals, believing there’s a right way and a wrong way of doing things; now they’re applying the same logic to the family-expansion business, and they’re surrounded by a marketplace that only affirms and reinforces this idea. ....... There was this idea we had about how things were supposed to be: The family should be dot dot dot, the man should be dot dot dot the woman should be dot dot dot.” ....... This is another brutal reality about children: They expose the gulf between our fantasies about family and its spikier realities. ....... One of the reasons I love being with my wife is because I love the family we have.” ....... the war zone of adolescence ..... “Teenagers can be casually brutal.” ...... is the amount of time married parents spend alone together each week: Nine hours today versus twelve in 1975. ...... They were exhausted and staring at the television.” ..... Children may provide unrivaled moments of joy. But they also provide unrivaled moments of frustration, tedium, anxiety, heartbreak. ...... the study sought to understand not just the moment-to-moment moods of its participants, but more existential matters, like how connected they felt, and how motivated, and how much despair they were in (as opposed to how much stress they were under): Do you not feel like eating? Do you feel like you can’t shake the blues? Do you feel lonely? Like you can’t get going? Parents, who live in a clamorous, perpetual-forward-motion machine almost all of the time, seemed to have different answers than their childless cohorts. ......... The least depressed parents are those whose underage children are in the house, and the most are those whose aren’t. ..... Technically, if parenting makes you unhappy, you should feel better if you’re spared the task of doing it. But if happiness is measured by our own sense of agency and meaning, then noncustodial parents lose. They’re robbed of something that gives purpose and reward. ..... Not one told him of regretting having children, but ten told him they regretted not having a family.
Thoughts? Parenting is work. Relationship is work. Marriage is work. You might as well skip out on the relationship too and go straight to watching more TV.
I once read about an article in some kind of an anthropology journal that suggested some cultures in Africa deal with adolescence way better than the US society does. There is something called emotional infrastructure.
And to continue with our conversation. I am absolutely loving the public nature of this. This is going to enhance my efficacy and my credibility when I get into the thick of things with Iran.
My Background
I was the number one student in my class at the top school in Nepal for the seven of the 10 years I was there.
Out of high school I became Vice General Secretary to a political party with two MPs, members of parliament. Someone who was a central committee member at the time currently is a cabinet minister in Nepal.
I was Poet Of The Year 1995, International Society Of Poets, Washington DC.
I got accepted to the University Of Chicago ("not for your numbers, but your actions and words") but the money part did not work out, so I went to the school in America that has the best financial aid program of any, second to none, not even Harvard, Berea College in Kentucky, the number one liberal arts college in the South.
Within six months of landing as an international student I got myself elected student body president at Berea, first time in college history a freshman did that.
In 1999 I was one of the founding members of a dot com - Chaitime.com - that was trying to be the premier South Asian online community. The company raised $25 million, round two, before succumbing to the nuclear winter. Rediff won the race.
I was a volunteer with Dean 2004 in Indiana. That got Howard Dean's brother excited when he found out. Of all places, Indiana? My story might have played a small role in Howard Dean's "50 state strategy."
I was one of Barack Obama's earliest supporters in New York City and got to know most of the top volunteers in all boroughs. (NYC Video: 10 Hours)
I was the only Nepali in the Nepali diaspora who worked full time for the democracy movement in Nepal that succeeded in April 2006. There were a lot of part timers who did great work.
Madhav Nepal was leading the largest party in the country at the time. In February 2006 he was put under house arrest. A month later his brother living next door managed to get him online the wireless way. The first person he contacted was me. We chatted on Gmail Chat.
January-February 2007 saw the Madhesi Movement, which was like the second phase of the April 2006 revolution, only more intense. This was with the goal of achieving equality for the Madhesi: I am a Madhesi. (Larry Ellison) Kind of like our own civil rights movement. Upendra Yadav was its most visible face. In July that year he was brought over to America, to Los Angeles where the Nepalis were having a convention. When he got off the plane, the first person he asked for was me. They took him to his hotel. He again asked, "Where is Paramendra Bhagat?"
I had never met Madhav Nepal or Upendra Yadav in person before. And I had talked to each of them on the phone only once. But both of them felt the reach of my intense work. Almost all my work was conducted in the digital realm.
Madhav Nepal is Prime Minister today. Upendra Yadav was Foreign Minister for about a year after the April 2008 elections to the constituent assembly.
I had a phone conversation with Ram Baran Yadav around February 2005 when he had run away from the country and was in Delhi after the king took over power in a coup. Ram Baran Yadav is president of Nepal today, which is not like being president in America, more like president in India, or queen in England.
What Did I Do?
In short, I moved the ball at all key junctures. And I used digital tools. What balls did I move and when? What tools did I use? How could I repeat the success for Iran? How exactly would I do it?
I will tackle those questions and more in subsequent posts. And I will also explain why I want 20 VCs starting with you to put in 5K each of personal money towards this work, why I am not approaching some other crowd.
The reason you were not able to find much about my Nepal work when you did a search at my blog is because you conducted the search not at my Nepal blog, but at Netizen, my technology and business blog. I have three active blogs. (Democracy For Nepal 1661 posts, Barackface 926 posts, Netizen 690 posts)
And I do understand when you invest in a company you put in the money upfront. You don't dole the money out in monthly investments. But perhaps my language was not precise, and hence the misunderstanding.
Larry's first wife left him because he did not work "hard enough." He would do just enough contract work to be able to pay his share of the bills. He has said he "screwed through my 20s." He went ahead and bought a boat. That sent the wife into therapy. She decided the choice was between going crazy and getting a divorce. She picked divorce. During the counseling before the divorce Larry promised to make "a million dollars," the first time he ever talked such big numbers. The wife laughed.
Larry's second wife left him because he worked "too hard." He got on the phone with the first wife and asked, "How does this work?"
Larry's third wife left him for a HarvardMBA. He sent an email to a friend: "Congratulations on getting and staying married."
Larry's fourth wife - from an "aristocratic" Kentucky family, his word - when it was time for her to leave, she had a choice between the family pickup truck and Oracle stocks. She picked the truck.
Somebody around this point described Larry's personal life a "train wreck."
The fifth wife refused to remarry saying her divorce was better than most of her friends' marriages. By now Larry was wealthy beyond imagination.
He has had a steady girlfriend since the late 1990s: Melony. Melony was engaged when he met her: at a mall. She did not know who he was. She feared he might be one of the "suites." Her fiance was an artist. Larry pursued her for over a year. Once he arranged for her and the fiance to show up for an event where Steve Jobs was going to show up. That was his "Melony strategy." Maybe Steve Jobs will impress you. She was a Mac user.
He has said about being a college dropout: "I could not have started a college, but I could have started a company."
About his many failed marriages and an eventual relationship he has said, "I needed to find me first."
Spain won. They dominated the game in the beginning, in the middle, and the end. And they won. They scored one goal and they won. This Spain-Germany game was the best game I have watched so far during World Cup 2010. There was no need for one superstar to emerge. These were two great teams that went for it. It was quite a display. What a game.
Sindre, if you don't know him, is one uber hacker. He is a geek, a nerd. He is Singularity. He is a friend. He is a foreigner. He is Scandinavian. He has a friend who likes to go couchsurfing.
Welcome, Sindre, back to New York. I will see you tonight.
And there is a fresh email from Brandon Diamond.
* Betterfly: connect with betterists to improve yourself
* HotPotato: share what you're doing with friends
* Learnvest: educational finance resource for women
* Frontal: rich web apps from simple markup
* StuffBuff: auctions anywhere you want them
* HowAboutWe: pick your perfect date then find a match
* Jetsetter: insider access to the places you want to go
* Comixology: read comics on the go and on the web
We'll also be hearing from Clay Shirky who'll be discussing "generosity as a design problem".
Plus, the entire evening will be guest emceed by the wonderful Dina Kaplan, co-founder of blip.tv.
So come on down to NYU Skirball at 7 PM for another evening with NYC's brightest movers and shakers.
Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
New York University
566 LaGuardia Place (at Washington Square South)
www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu / 212.992.8484
a world where many entrepreneurs see venture capital as a necessary evil ..... the tale of meeting Foundry Group’s Feld and how the VC’s unorthodox approach to learning about the company ultimately cemented Smith’s desire to have him as an investor...... Brad intrigued me because he didn’t come across like any venture capitalist I had ever met ..... ‘I’m not going to conform’ persona, and are both passionate to their core about helping startups ........ “The mindset of a typical VC is geared more towards a later stage company that has crossed the chasm and the customer base is beyond early adopters,” Smith told us. “Finding someone that knows you still need to find out where to aim your rocket is very important.” ....... Feld’s process was simple: He wanted to get to know the founders and find that each interaction had been more interesting than the last. ....... When I told him that we didn’t have an investor presentation put together yet he quipped, ‘The last thing in the world I want to see is a f—ing presentation ....... Brad and I spent the next six months getting to know each other, during which Brad and his partners repeatedly drilled us on our thinking, our strategy, our technology and our market approach. We told him we would invite him into the “sausage making” process and he readily donned his hairnet and dove in. ....... Foundry never asked for projections or historical financials. “We talked about where we want to take the product and how we want to serve customers ..... “After we signed a term sheet, I finally asked Brad if he wanted to see our deck. I sent it to him and he said, ‘That scared me.’
We quickly concluded that we needed to kill everything we had just spent six months building and go back to the drawing board. Given that we had only two months of cash in the bank at the time, this decision wasn’t an easy one but we felt strongly that it was necessary. ....... Andy has a favorite saying, “We know your plans are wrong, we just don’t yet know how wrong.” ...... changing direction like this meant he was willing to forget every one of those prior promises and start down a new path. ....... we went from 0 users to 8 million users in an afternoon. ....... he wasn’t your typical VC. Brad is an early investor in Zynga the undisputed king of social gaming. ....... we knew that having Brad as a partner would give us a huge amount of credibility with potential customers, so we began stalking him. ...... We mostly went back and forth via email, where niceties were commonly replaced with a raw curiosity of how best to build BigDoor and how we would meet the coming onslaught of demand for our platform. Brad was direct and often told me where he thought I was wrong, which laid the groundwork for me being able to do the same with him. We found some common ground and a fair amount of areas to disagree and challenge each other. We joked about 80’s bands, compared reading lists and shared paranoid rants about how machines will eventually take over the world (they will). But what’s most notable is what we didn’t discuss. Never once did anyone at Foundry ask us for projections or historical financials. We didn’t talk about the deal, valuation or board composition and we never talked about exit timing or how much money they needed to make. Product, customers and philosophy – that’s where we spent our time. ...... On two separate occasions Brad told me he was “out” and wasn’t going to invest. ..... “The word ‘no’ is simply a milestone on the path to ‘yes’.” This emboldened me to go back to Brad and tell him he was wrong and that he was the perfect partner for us. I made no attempt at all to posture or play hard to get .......... This wasn’t done out of desperation – we had multiple offers from other great VCs – we conducted ourselves in a completely transparent fashion because that’s how Foundry was toward us. ......... until one day Brad sent an email that said, “Ok – I’m ready (and psyched) to do a deal.” He then laid out deal terms in one very simple paragraph. I responded with a very long email that ultimately asked for just one change, and he simply responded with “Deal.” That was it, that email exchange was the extent of our term sheet. Instead of grinding us on terms, Brad spent the three weeks from our agreement to closing making introductions for us to potential customers. ....... we’ve never had a deal go this smooth nor have we ever had anyone who was so awesome to work with on the other side of the table. ......... Having great investors isn’t just about warm fuzzies, it should (and does) also result in real customers. ..... as we endeavor to weave the BigDoor platform into the very fabric of the Internet.
Ah I never loved you
And if I loved you
I wouldn't say I'm sorry oh no
I stand outside under broken leaves
Always and forever more
And together getting lonely
I thought I couldn't do this without you
Single in his bed somewhere
Ashes still it fall fall falls
What you do, what I do is ultimately about people. I read a quote from you a few weeks back where you are saying show me a web service that has major user engagement and I will show you a way to monetize it. If enough people show up, it will work.
Thank you for the rapid response to my blog post email yesterday. Here are some more details.
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 was a political cyclone. 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.
Nepal: Background
Nepal is the poorest country outside of Africa. More than 75% of the countries on the planet are smaller populations than Nepal. So it is not that small a country. There are as many people in Nepal as there are in Iraq. You could have introduced democracy into Iraq the Nepal way and saved a trillion dollars in direct costs and more in indirect costs.
Nepal has been the most popular destination among Peace Corps volunteers for some reason during the half century of that program's existence. I don't really know why because I have not traveled the world.
Nepal is situated between India and China. Those two economies are growing at double digit rates. There are forecasts that show the Chinese economy will be bigger than the American economy by 2020. The democracy work in Nepal has implications for China and hence has larger geopolitical implications disproportionate to Nepal's size, especially when you take into account the Maoists of Nepal, the deadliest ultra left group on the planet since the end of the Cold War, and the Maoists of India, the number one security threat to India, as stated by the Indian government, affecting one third of that country's districts.
9/11 was a flashpoint, just like Pearl Harbor was a flashpoint. You don't want a third flashpoint in Taiwan. The Arab world and Africa and China are the three large chunks where democracy still is not in full play, but China stands out in that I don't think the American political system is what the Chinese need to convert to. The truth lies somewhere in between. America needs total campaign finance reform so it can truly become a one person one vote democracy. And China needs multi-party democracy and federalism and Tibet and Taiwan as states in that federal China. And the fermentations inside of Nepal going on right now in terms of mainstreaming the Maoists have implications for China and India. If Nepal can be turned into a multi-party democracy of state funded parties in the constitution that country is scheduled to write for itself within a year, then we will be on our way.
Iran
Just like Nepal has implications for China, Iran has implications for the entire Arab world. That country for Africa could be Zimbabwe. What is exciting about Iran is what success there could mean for Saudi Arabia and Egypt. When I see people out in the streets in Tehran I get visions of people out in the streets in Cairo.
After success in Nepal, I have witnessed wastes in Bhutan, Tibet, Burma and Iran. I have watched helplessly. The people on the ground have been doing the hard part - coming out into the streets in the face of immense brutality - and the world has been failing them in each case. A democracy movement is science, it can be made to work every single time. But you do have to mutate faster than the virus does. And you do have to take a holistic, global approach. There are basic principles that worked in Nepal that could work anywhere.
There are a few steps that the democracy movement in Iran needs to take, the most important is to shift the goal post. The goal can not be to get the existing regime to hold the presidential election all over again. The goal has to be regime change. The goal can not be to take the brutality lying down. The goal has to be to document every act of brutality to bring the perpetrators to justice once a new, interim government takes over power. The goal can not be to keep coming out into the streets. A democracy movement is supposed to last a few weeks at most, not months and years. You shut the country down completely until the regime gives way to an interim government with the mandate to hold elections to a constituent assembly within a year of taking over power. That assembly would have two years to write a constitution. The democracy movement in Iran needs a leadership change. The current leader has not been able to think outside the box. He is boxed in. He is committed to functioning within the current mullahcracy in place.
My Work
It will be transparent, it will be digital, it will be political. My blog Barackface will be the hub of much of what I do. We are counting on the fact that the world is connected enough by now that everyone and every organization I need to reach out to and communicate with I can do digitally and in a massive way because a blog scales on its own. Social media is magic. And we are counting on the fact that I did this for Nepal, I can do this for Iran all over again.
After there is regime change and an interim government takes over, I will be done, my project complete. I will no longer need to give full time involvement, although I can't imagine not maintaining part time involvement all the way to the country getting itself a new constitution. After so much and such intense emotional involvement you don't just walk away.
You put in 5K of your personal money into this now, like today, like yesterday. Fred Wilson puts in his 5K once he is back from his Italy vacation in less than a week. And you two find me 18 other VCs who will put in 5K each by the end of July. Marc Andreessen 5K, Ben Horowitz 5K, Albert Wenger 5K, Brad Burnham 5K, Vinod Khosla 5K.
I start with 100K. It comes to me at the beginning - not in monthly installments - like you would do with a startup. If I can show success by September 2011 - in 15 months - each of you put in another 2.5K each for a total of 50K as a bonus payment to me. If I can do the whole thing in less than 15 months, the 150K deal still stands.
Tech
You are a VC. I am a tech entrepreneur. Why would we do this? Because ultimately it is all about people. It is about impacting lives. When the Iranians first took to the streets it warmed our hearts as to their use of Twitter as a tool. It is all related.
I am about 15 months away from my green card, and I am about 15 months away from launching my tech startup. My tech startup will be to do with the last mile of the ISP business. And from working on democracy in Iran to working on the startup is not going to feel like a career change to me. I think of democracy as the Big Bang in a country's life. It is a starting point of sorts. Once a country gets its democracy, it is on its way. But democracy alone does not put food on the table. And universal broadband is that magic wand that will help bridge the huge gulf between the West and the Global South. I had to come to America. Others like me don't have to if they can have broadband.
This was in early 2006. I was deep into the Nepal democracy movement work. We were a few months away from grand success, but we could not have known it at the time. And I got an email from a German reporter. She wanted to talk. So we talked over email and the phone, and she wrote up an article for some German newspaper. I used Google Translate to translate it into English to publish at my Nepal blog.
Her story had a fancy title: Robin Hood On The Internet. That story got picked up by the German radio people. They emailed me asking me to come to their studio in Manhattan so they could record an interview. They said they had requests from many local radio stations in Germany. And so we talked.
And although I have been rooting for Brazil and Argentina, they are both out. Now it is obvious to me that Germany is going to win this cup. And I am happy for them.
I am about 15 months away from a green card, and about that far away from launching my startup, which right now I think will be something to do with the last mile of the ISP business. I think the best use of my time from now till then would be to pour myself fully into the democracy movement in Iran. I have done this before, I can do this again. I did this for Nepal in 2006. This is what I have had to say about that:
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 was a political cyclone. 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.
This work will help me keep polishing my two strengths that I would bring to my startup: vision and group dynamics. Internet access is the voting right for this century, the Internet Century, and to do well in that business you have to be able to deeply care about masses of people like those that have been thronging into the streets of Iran.
Iran is a low hanging fruit. The hardest part of a democracy movement is getting people to come out into the streets. Well, that has been happening in Iran. This world is connected enough by now that one Digital Ninja/Commando based out of New York City could make that fundamental difference. Everyone I need to meet in person for this work is right here in New York City, primarily members of the Iranian diaspora. All I would need is a laptop, a smartphone and a monthly metro pass. And me.
I need you guys to sponsor this work out of your own pocket. Put in 5K each, and find me 18 other VCs who will put in 5K each. I ask for 100K and 15 months. That would be enough time. If I succeed, you get to put in another 2.5K each for a 50K bonus to me. This 5K you might put into this is the equivalent of 5 million you might put into Kiva. Democracy is the ultimate fishing net you can give to a people. Once they have a modern democracy, they can help themselves.
Image via Wikipedia
