Netizen

Saturday, July 17, 2010

News: July 17

ReadWriteWeb

The New Digg: What It Means For Power Users & Publishers
10 Inspiring TED Talks for Startups
Ben & Jerry's: How a Big Brand Explores Augmented Reality
Google Launches App to Let Users Share Open Parking Spots
Twitter Launching Analytics Product Soon
The Future of Tech According to Kids: Immersive, Intuitive and Surprisingly Down-to-Earth
Augmented Reality Becoming More Like the Read/Write Web
How Steve Ballmer Ruined the Cloud and the World Cup
RFID Helps Indian Company Trap Ghost Workers
Google Makes Major Semantic Web Play, Acquires Freebase Operators Metaweb
3 Deadly Mistakes made by SaaS Providers
Apple: Free Cases for All

AllThingsD

Facebook Will Announce 500 Million Users Next Week With “Facebook Stories”
Gizmodo to Cooperate With Probe Into Lost iPhone Prototype
Justin Bieber’s “Baby” the Most-Watched YouTube Video Ever, So Far
Jobs Feels Like He’s Been Through a Tear-Down
Jobs: Nobody’s Perfect (But We’re Very Close)
AMD: After Hours Gains Gone; Focus Turns To Processor Delay
Shhh! Google Buys Metaweb to Boost Search Results
Apple’s iPhone 4 Solution: Free Cases For Everyone!
Hey! Did You Know a Lot of People Used Twitter During the World Cup?
The Only Problem With Droid X Reception? Too Darn Warm.
Apple’s “Just Encase” Answer to iPhone 4 Complaints
Japanese Author Skirts Publishers With iPad Novel
The Facebook Movie Is a Money Maker for Twitter
Venture Capitalist’s New Frontier: Where Cellphones Meet Retailing
AMD Posts Sharply Higher Sales
Paul Allen, Microsoft Co-Founder, Pledges Fortune to Philanthropy

Engadget

iPhone 4 proximity sensor fix in the works
RIM co-CEOs pull no punches responding to Apple's antenna statements
Jobs: 'no one's going to buy' a big phone
iPhone 4 coming to Canada and 16 other countries July 30th
Apple: iPhone 4 drops 'less than one additional call per 100 than the 3GS'
iPhone 4 proximity sensor fix in the works
iPhone 4 sales: 3 million and counting, 1.7 percent returned
Apple affirms: no software fix for iPhone 4 antenna issue
Xbox 360 sales increase 88 percent in June, give it US console crown for the month
Google halting Nexus One official store sales after current inventory depleted
Nokia: 'we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict'
2011 Subaru Outback gains in-car WiFi option, strange Maine birds not included
Toyota and Tesla plan to bring electric RAV4 to market in 2012
Sony Alpha A390 and A290 DSLRs hands-on
Boxee's first production Box gets shown off to the world (video)

ArsTechnica

iPhone 4 antenna: unanswered questions, unearned trust
Mercury flyby maps new territory
4G data caps: not here yet, but likely to come
Ocean bacteria may create as much methane as they destroy
What happens when we run out of oil and coal?
Grades don't drop for college Facebook fiends
Funding overhaul aims at fast broadband for rural healthcare
Electric vehicle, battery makers get charge out of stimulus
Droid X first impressions: nice hardware, Motorola
iOS 4.0.1 tweaks bar display, doesn't fix signal drop
Clear Channel: Internet means we get to buy more radio stations
Users of location services worried about robberies, stalking

VentureBeat

Boxee shows off final version of its video streaming Boxee Box (video)
Facebook co-founder Moskovitz says movie has more sex, booze
Nokia kicks Apple while it’s down, says it prioritizes antenna performance over looks
Apple does have a sense of humor with “antennagate” (video)
Even during iPhone 4 damage control, Steve Jobs is a skillful onstage presenter (video)
Intel snags former Palm and Apple VP Mike Bell for smartphone plans
Google acquires MetaWeb, says Freebase will become “more open”
New report: VC investing bouncing back in Q2
Samsung strategist Omar Khan talks superphones (video)
Roundup: Firefox comes to the iPhone, MySpace gets a makeover and more
SGN launches Skies of Glory as the first cross-platform Android-iPhone game
Apple won’t recall iPhone 4 despite reception problems, WSJ says
California sues Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for blocking green energy initiative

GigaOm

Is the Difference Between MySpace and Facebook Black and White?
Four Business Tips From Apple's Steve Jobs
Why Google Launched App Inventor
The State of Open Source for the Smart Grid
Hulu Plus on the PS3: Less Content Than on the Web
Google Gets Semantic: Buys Metaweb
Surprise: World Cup Final Fails to Set Another Peak Tweeting Record
The Email Signature: From Efficient to Overkill
Google’s App Inventor: Escalating the Mobile Ad War?
Google Bows to Criticism, Changes Google News Design
When it Comes to Broadband, UK Still A Laggard
Seed-Stage Investments Jump Sharply in Q2 2010
Video: Chris Sacca Helps Founders Cash Out Shares Early
Esquire Misses the Point on Twitter and the World Cup

Friday, July 16, 2010

I have decided to reclaim my Twitter account. What I mean by that is I am no longer going to be feeding TechCrunch, Mashable, CNet, BusinessWeek and Time into my Twitter stream like I have been doing for over a year now. They have had their free rides. Now I have a blog that intends to compete with them. I am going to link plenty to them on a near daily basis. But now the feeds into my Twitter stream are going to be only from my blogs. Most of the fed tweets will be from this blog itself because this is the most active of my blogs.

I did that feed thing because when I was desperately trying to accumulate followers on Twitter, I figured I could not fail in my attempt to create a great Twitter stream if I fed from some of my favorite blogs, news sites to visit, my favorite magazines.

That worked for a while. It no longer works for me now that I am toying with the idea of pro blogging in a serious way.

A spike in blog traffic can boost your self esteem. It has boosted mine. Now TechCrunch, Mashable, CNet, BusinessWeek, and Time come across as crutches, possibly even competitors. Why am I giving them all that free traffic again?

TwitterFeed tells me the newest feed from CNet into my Twitter stream has 700 clicks. Those clicks could be mine. Those could be clicks for my blog.

Hello people, the free lunch is over.

I never really did the RSS thing, and I tried Google Reader but I did not become a regular. I was using Twitter for all that. But no more. Now I create my own news feeds in the form of daily blog posts that link to many news items from many different sources.

A 4 AM Traffic Peak, Mostly From Canada
Traffic: Canada Top Country, 2 AM Peak
What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits

A 4 AM Traffic Peak, Mostly From Canada

Internal development of Canada's internal bord...

Image via Wikipedia

How do you explain this? I think people in Canada sleep less. Or this is traffic from the northern parts of Canada where the sun is around many more hours of the day. Or parts where the sun never sets in summer.

Hello there. Thanks for dropping by.

The page hits for today stand at 1200, which used to be the previous peak for the longest time. And the day is still young. Looks to me like this blog's traffic is about to take off, enough that I can do this full time, if not right away then perhaps in a few months, or maybe even right away.

Blogging full time would be the best thing I could do for my startup that I expect to launch in about 15 months after I get my green card. Blogging full time would allow me to read all I want to read, to network feverishly in the New York tech ecosystem. I would explore the landscape for my startup through my blog.

If I have 1200 page hits for the day, and the top page for the day is getting only 80 of that, and that page is not a new page, but from a week back, that means I am doing well with the search engines. Traffic from search is the best kind. Otherwise sometimes you get a spike in traffic because some big shot blogger linked to you, and then all that traffic has evaporated in a day.

Search engine traffic is the good kind. It is more stable. Although Google can always tweak the algorithms and make you go away. But then that tweaking can go the other way as well. You could see another spike, spike upon spike.

If I were to treat this blog like a full time business, what would I do?

I like the blog's name: Netizen. It is a solo operation.

Every day I would put out a page of links to all the top stories from all the top tech blogs and from top news sites. A top story is what I determine a top story is. I would be making no attempt to be objective.

And I would write a few blog posts every day on topics of interest to me.

I would go to and blog about many of the key tech events in town. The two top tech events in town are:

NY Tech MeetUp
Digital Dumbo

I would watch and share videos from the top tech events anywhere and everywhere. You do that enough and you realize watching those videos is often better than showing up for many of those events. You can't show up for all of them anyways. And if you are going to every event on the list, your networking is not focused enough.

I would be commenting at other blogs much more. You have to be out and about, you know.

Content
Traffic
Monetization

Those are the three elements.

As for monetization, the Google ads are back up. But Google ads only make good money if you have a ton of traffic. I wish I could dig into the NY tech ecosystem to have more companies let me do blog post ads.

Or maybe it is too early to think of full time pro blogging. The traffic is building up but it's not there yet. But it would be nice to be able to do it full time for a year. And then I could do a $1 salary thing for my startup the way Bloomberg does for the city, he is a $1 a year Mayor.

I should probably send out a few emails. Hey, how would you like for me to do a blog post ad for you? Letting me do a blog post ad or two for you is almost like hiring me as a business consultant. I bring along more than exposure. I bring perspectives.

Google's Metaweb Acquisition

This video above explains it better than the blog posts below. Metaweb is about barcoding the internet so it becomes easier to search stuff online. No wonder Google came knocking. This is also a great example of innovation happening outside a big company in a startup. If you are a big company, when you can't do it yourself, you can sometimes make up for it by being on a constant lookout, like a frog and fireflies.

TechCrunch: Google Acquires Metaweb To Make Search Smarter

Metaweb develops both semantic data storage infrastructure for the web, and Freebase,an “open, shared database of the world’s knowledge”. Freebase is a massive, collaboratively edited database of cross-linked data. The idea behind the product is to create a system for building the semantic web. Freebase allows anyone to contribute, structure, search, copy and use data.

The Official Google Blog: Deeper Understanding With Metaweb

we’ve acquired Metaweb, a company that maintains an open database of things in the world. Working together we want to improve search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone. .... we’re also excited about the possibilities for Freebase, Metaweb’s free and open database of over 12 million things, including movies, books, TV shows, celebrities, locations, companies and more. Google and Metaweb plan to maintain Freebase as a free and open database for the world.

Tech, Women, Diversity

Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...

Image via Wikipedia

Often when Fred Wilson puts out a blog post where he links to about four different blog posts, I know it is one of those posts that is asking for a reply blog post, sometimes to echo the sentiment, sometimes to express a disagreement, often just to give further momentum to a great topic. Today is the turn of women in technology.

This whole debate reminds me of the creationism debate. My take has been religion and science deal with two different levels of reality. Religion is a belief system. Those beliefs do not have to follow the laws of physics, and many of them don't. Jesus walking on water makes sense in religion, does not make sense in science. I am not going to think you are a prude for believing that.

Religion has to be looked at in the religious realm. Science inhabits the scientific realm. And there are intersection points, like when Galileo was harassed. When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, many people in Nepal did not believe. The moon is a god. The guy probably climbed some hill, and thinks he is on the moon, that was the sentiment.

Gender is as big a topic in sociology as gravity is in physics. It is big. It is all pervasive. Just because we don't think about it much does not mean gravity is not active every waking hour, and while we are down.

There are many - they tend to be white men for some reason - who argue technology is neutral to your background. You can be any gender, any cultural background, it does not matter. They are lying. Or they are ignorant. Some of them are evil. They are invested in persisting the status quo.

Even where meritocracy can be shown to exist, those with the merits and the skills and the intellect stand on centuries of favoring one kind of people over another kind of people. And that is when there are not outright sexist informal and formal structures in place.

Gender and technology: there are many intersection points.

Equality is something that has to be proactively sought. I don't think sexism is in the interests of men. A healthy male female ratio in the workplace and at the various leadership levels has to be attempted. This is not a male versus female issue. There are those - men and women - who are on the right side of history, and there are those who are on the wrong side. We should get more people to come over on to the right side. We have to constantly be evangelizing.

Fred Wilson: XX Combinator
Tereza Nemessanyi: XX Combinator
Brad Feld: The Discussion About The Lack Of Women In Tech
Eric Ries: Why Diversity Matters (The Meritocracy Business)

When you visit Fred's blog post, make sure you don't miss out on the action in the comments section.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Darren Rowse's Seven Links Challenge

Image via CrunchBase

Take the 7 Link Challenge Today #7links

My first post: When Web Hosting Is No Longer A Problem

This is me celebrating the new, free Blogger platform.
A post I enjoyed writing the most: Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever

I have received so much positive comments from people I know about this one.
A post which had a great discussion: Online Dating Newsflash: Race And Religion Matter

This is just Alex and me talking. But the talk went on and on.
A post on someone else’s blog that I wish you’d written:
How I Make Money Blogging: Income Split for June 2010

Darren Rowse makes it look so easy. Just jack up the traffic and run Google ads. His Feedburner count is at 140K, mine is at 2K.
My most helpful post: Could 2011 Be Venmo's Year?

The founders of Venmo really appreciated this. I touched lives with this post.
A post with a title that I am proud of: Me @ BBC

This is me hitting the big leagues.
A post that I wish more people had read: To Iran, With Love (3)

Darren, I think you should help me with this fundraising. It is a good cause. You should help me with this because you are the top pro blogger on the planet, and I am the top blogger in terms what big stuff I have been able to do politically through the blogging medium. What I did for Nepal, I want to do for Iran. I want you to take the lead on this fundraising.

Traffic: Canada Top Country, 2 AM Peak

Image of Dario Meli

Now I remember why I disabled Google Analytics for this blog months back: you keep wanting to go back to check the latest numbers.

Blogger Stats

For the past week Canada has been my top country, it has given me 50% more traffic than the US. Go figure.

There is a peak for 2 AM on July 13 for the week. I thought that might be India. Nope. It's Canada. Might those be college students pulling all nighters? Toronto? Hello there. Thanks for dropping by.

@quikness might appreciate my Canada popularity.

This has been my top post this past week: Brazil.

What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits

Given enough page hits, I could do this near full time while I wait to launch my company. That would be swell. Would be a great way to prepare for a company launch. Somebody once said blogging is like graduate school seminar. It can be. It can be many other things as well.

Blogging falls in the mind food domain.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Is The iPhone 4 In Trouble?

There has been a lot of talk today that the iPhone 4 is in serious trouble. I personally am not an iPhone user. But when was the last time Apple received this much negative buzz? It has been a long time.

Some people are hinting there is no PR remedy to this situation. The only remedy is total recall. Now if that were warranted, that would be a big one. Apple would be in the hole for at least a billion dollars if that were to be the decision.

I am not reporting on the engineering mishap, I am just reflecting on the buzz. You can go plenty of places to read on the engineering mishap, quite a few I have linked to from this blog.

What do you think? How bad is the news? Will this storm pass? Or will Apple have to decide on a recall on their new product?

Image via CrunchBase

New York Times

Apps That Don’t Exist, but Should
What We're Reading: Twitter Ads
iPhone Users Testing the Android Waters
Online Photo Storage Competition Heats Up
An Artificial Heart Its Makers Say Could Be a Standard Replacement
Defiantly, Panasonic Pushes a Vast Catalog
Design Flaw in iPhone 4, Testers Say
Itineraries: Social Networking Takes Flight
Link by Link: How Can Wikipedia Grow? Maybe in Bengali
Bits: Consumer Reports Says iPhone 4 Has Design Flaw
Pogue's Posts: Free Text Messaging Is Possible
Apple's iPhone 4 Woes Go Mainstream, Recall 'Inevitable'
Can Consumer Reports Hurt the iPhone?
A Show of Power From Dimon and JPMorgan
Analysts Warn of Risks Threatening China’s Banks
White House Economists Praise Stimulus Results
Grassley a No on Financial Reform Bill
Fed Minutes Weigh on Wall Street
Will Financial Overhaul Prevent Bailouts?
Singapore Raises 2010 Growth Forecast Amid Asia-Pacific Rebound
Financial Reform Bill Limps Toward Vote
Factory Efficiency Comes to the Hospital
Financial Bill to Close Regulator of Fading Industry
New York Presses Banks on Foreclosures
Administration Says Stimulus Has Saved Millions of Jobs
CNN Nears Deal to Fill King’s Slot

News: July 14

I find it awesome that iPhone Microsoft Clipar...

Image by voteprime via Flickr

TechCrunch

Consumer Reports Slams The iPhone 4 Over Antenna Issue
Video: David Letterman’s Top 10 Signs You’ve Purchased A Bad iPhone 4
Groupon, Twitter, Foursquare, And Yelp Will Convene At The Social Currency CrunchUp
Twitter’s EarlyBird Takes Flight With Disney Movie Deal; Groupon And Gilt To Come
Here Comes Apple Earth. Map Startup Poly9 Reportedly Snatched Up By Cupertino
AndroLib Gets A Makeover, Estimates Over 1 Billion Android Apps Downloaded So Far
New York City To Keep Track Of Water Use With Wireless Monitors
Naspers Buys 28.7% Of Facebook, Zynga Investor And ICQ Owner DST
Steve Ballmer says Microsoft is 'hardcore' about tablet computers

Mashable

Facebook’s Open Graph and Like Button are Going Mobile
Bill Gates Invests in Cleaner Car Technology
Disney Is Twitter’s First @Earlybird Sponsor
What Apple Must Do to Stop the Bleed
Google Fiber Is One Step Closer to Reality
Intel Gains Almost $11B in “Best Quarter Ever”

CNet

Microsoft keeps eye on Bing's growth chart
iPhone app created for psychic German octopus
Chicken came before egg, evidence suggests
Exxon Mobil growing its algae biofuels program
Twitter's @earlybird: Not the most magical debut
Alleged Russian spy worked for Microsoft
Adobe Reader, IE top vulnerability list
Facebook's Russian investor snags $388 million
Court: FCC 'indecency' rule doesn't make tech sense
New Facebook app whitens men's profile pic
The quest for the supersonic skydive
Building the world's most advanced aircraft carrier
Internet appliances: The next generation
Solar structures offer self-sufficiency in disaster

BusinessWeek

The Factory Rebound May Be Peaking
Intel Cash Machine May Print $12 Billion
Washington is the Strongest Job Market
America's Strongest Job Markets
Microsoft Pays App Developers to Do Windows
Microsoft Worker was 12th Alleged Russian Spy
Ten Top Smartphone Apps for College
Obama Meets With Buffett to Discuss Economy, Jobs
Iran Scientist Says Americans Kidnapped, Held Him for 14 Months
U.S. Stocks Fall on Fed’s Reduced Growth Forecast; Intel Gains
How Yum! Brands Is Conquering the World
Promisec: Securing Networks from Within
Newspapers: Take a Cue From Startups and Get Cloudy
Sorting Fact from Fiction on Health-Care Reform
The Small Business Jobs Bill: To Us, It's Meaningless
The Future of Advertising
Why GM May Be Worth More Than Ford
What if Government Ran Like Business?

Time

Housing Market Sees Widespread Price-Cutting
Chicken and the Egg: Mystery Solved?
Neverland Ranch: The Newest State Park?
Buying a Corvette? Build the Engine Yourself
Will Obama's Immigration Focus Hurt Democrats?
Can the Chevy Volt Recharge General Motors?
The History of the Electric Car
11 Milestones in GM's Year Since Bankruptcy
Obama's Mideast Challenge: Trying to Look Busy
Italy vs. the Mafia: Beheading the 'Ndrangheta
Spain's World Cup Win: Final Brings Spaniards Together
Senate Midterms: How the Tea Party May Hurt Republicans
Beijing Starts Gating, Locking Migrant Villages
Scientists: Gulf Spill Altering Food Web
Cleaning Up On the Spill

New York Times

A Scientist Takes On Gravity
U.S. Delays Test of Device That Could Seal Gulf Well
On Facebook, Telling Teachers How Much They Meant
Police Are Charged in Post-Katrina Shootings
Trapped by Gaza Blockade, Locked in Despair
Scientist Heads Home, Iran Says
Deterred From Gaza, Libyan Ship Enters Egypt Port
Financial Bill to Close Regulator of Fading Industry
Financial Reform Bill Limps Toward Vote
Heads Turn as a Bridge Floats By
Gatton Journal: Trying to Stop Cattle Burps From Heating Up Planet
The New Abortion Providers
On Education: A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America
Grassley a No on Financial Reform Bill
Fed Minutes Weigh on Wall Street
Citing Demand, Intel Tops Forecast
Standards Issued for Electronic Health Records
George Steinbrenner, 1930-2010: His Final Victory Is a Yankees Empire Restored
George Steinbrenner, Who Built Yankees Into Powerhouse, Dies at 80
Explorer: Walking With the Herds in Kenya
Oil Spill’s Impact on Gulf Seafood Remains Uncertain
Downsizing: Styling a Downsized Life
WattStation: An Electric Car Charger With a Designer Touch
Toyota Blames Drivers for Some Acceleration Problems
Letters: A New Approach to Immigration Raids
Movie Review | 'Alamar': A Boy’s Slice of Paradise Is Time Alone With Dad
The Loneliness of Governor Schwarzenegger
Turn 70. Act Your Grandchild’s Age.
Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan?
Is Jousting the Next Extreme Sport?

Shopping Around For Iran

Image via Wikipedia

Brad Feld and Fred Wilson did not bite - they seem to suggest Iran is not in their domain expertise - but I have a ready presentation in the process, and I have decided to shop around. This is not an investment opportunity. This falls in the public service domain.

I came across a John Boyd blog post while working on this post: Seed Money. And so I emailed him.

You have a great post on seed money ... I followed a link from Fred Wilson's blog to your post. Great post. http://www.blindreason.org/2010/07/rush-to-early-seed-stage-later-stage.html What really got my attention was your putting broadband on the top of the list. I am 15 months from a green card, and 15 months from my startup. My startup will deal with the last mile of the broadband business.

Are you in NYC? Let's meet for coffee some time.

I need you to help me with something. http://technbiz.blogspot.com/2010/07/to-iran-with-love-3.html I need you to put 3-5K into this. This is not an investment. This falls in the public service domain. This is about democracy in Iran.

I also just sent out a whole bunch of tweets to a whole bunch of angel investors. I sent out tweets to all angel investors on the List Of Angels On Twitter. The cut off point was people who had tweeted out in the past 24 hours. If you are not active on Twitter daily, maybe you are not of interest to me.

One Tweet Response

I should not have been, but I was surprised to find so many Indians on the list, including one I am Facebook friends with.

Seed Money

Image representing First Round Capital as depi...

Image via CrunchBase

It is much cheaper to start a dot com today than it was in the late 1990s. What I do for free on the Blogger platform today had to be built from scratch for a dot com I was part of in 1999. Amazon got rid of servers for you. Only a few days back Google dropped a bomb: now anyone can create an Android app. Elementary programming is now like flipping the light switch.

The need for early stage funding is not as dire as it used to be. But the need for later stage funding is still dire. I am going to argue that is also going to change in the next wave of innovation. There will be companies like OfferPal Media that will help you monetize early and strong. There will come a time when most startups will need little to no money early stage, and little to no money late stage. Asking a startup to both build a great service and to monetize that service is like asking coders to buy and upkeep servers. Makes no sense.

But this newish development is not just about there being less need for big, early money. This also is about saying investors need to get down and dirty with their investments. They don't need to put in daily involvement like members of the executive team, but showing up once in a while for the Board meeting and getting your fee perhaps does not cut it no more. You need a more hands on approach.

The dot com domain is going to stay fertile for a long, long time. To see saturation in that domain is to suggest the human mind will attain satiation at some point, and I just don't see that happening. The human mind has been programmed to stay permanently hungry. Content creation, content curation, content search: they will stay in play.

There is plenty of room on the cutting edge. But then there is plenty of room if the entire world is your stage. You have to be willing to go wherever there might be opportunities for growth.

And money does not differentiate between one sector and the other. New hot domains will emerge. Clean tech, bio tech, nano tech are the obvious names being bounced around. And there are old names. I believe microfinance could easily digest a few trillion dollars. All that money the Wall Street junkies sunk into real estate the past decade and brought the house down for the rest of us, if they had been innovative, they would have taken some of that money into microfinance.

Summary statement: things are exciting, and are getting heated up. I can't even see five years out, let alone 10.

Fred Wilson: Some Thoughts On The Seed Fund Phenomenon

I blog because it helps me think through a lot of issues we face in our business ...... it still takes on average $20mm to get a web startup to sustainable positive cash flow. But the vast majority of that capital will be required after the business has "traction." ..... What has changed in technology venture capital is not so much the total capital requirements, but when they are required. ..... Dennis and Naveen had built the service all by themselves and had just lured Harry onto their team. They needed no capital to do that. In fact they did not even have a bank account when we went to close our seed investment...... The deals that work get very competitive when it is time to raise real money. ..... First Round Capital, the grandaddy of the web 2.0 super seed funds, has now evolved into a firm that is twice as big as our firm in terms of investors and they have more capital under management than we do. And I've met a couple investors who are talking about creating "seed bridge funds." I think that's a great idea..... We are still figuring out to evolve the VC business to reflect the change in financing needs of entrepreneurs and we aren't done by a long shot.

Paul Kedrosky: The Coming Super-Seed Crash

a combination of ease of entry, lower capital requirements, failing incumbent venture capital (VC) firms, and general fervor has driven the emergence of a host of new "super-seed" firms. These small-ish outfits -- usually running less than $20m -- specialize in seeding a bazillion companies, following on in very few, and generally trying to be fast-moving and networked. ..... Nor does it mean that incumbent VCs will once again rule the world with mega funds. Many of them, like the dinosaurs, have turned out to be evolutionary dead-ends that couldn't adapt with a changing financial landscape. ..... Declining average cost of company creation is driving declining average cost of venture firm creation. ...... Incumbent VCs make up shit about the inadequacies of super-angel funds ..... Venture capital is hard, whether practiced by brain-dead VC incumbents, or by smart and nimble super-angels. Most VCs, and most angels, fail -- it's just that its takes 10 years to kill a VC fund ..... as incumbent VCs justifiably vanish en masse, niche overshoot seems almost ecologically inevitable among super-seed funds.

Chris Dixon: It’s Not That Seed Investors Are Smarter – It’s That Entrepreneurs Are

was a very common occurrence before the rise of seed funds, due to VCs pressuring entrepreneurs to raise more money than they needed so the VCs could “put more money to work.” ..... I thought the brands of the big VCs would help me and didn’t really understand the dynamics of fund raising. ..... Today, entrepreneurs are much savvier, thanks to the proliferation of good advice on blogs, via mentorship programs, and a generally more active and connected entrepreneur community. ...... prominent seed funds will outperform top-tier VC funds

John Boyd: The Rush To Early Seed Stage: Later Stage Implications And Top 7 Mature Themes

every time I turn my head there is another seed incubator popping up. .... Things are not as active in traditional venture capital funds as many struggle to raise super sized funds and maintain the flow of fees. Angels and incubators, on the other hand, are exceedingly active. ...... While some of these early stage deals will be capital efficient even in later stages, many will still need relatively large raises that angels and incubators just can't handle. ..... an early stage deal has to reinvent itself multiple times. ..... Some really famous seed investors use the shotgun approach. ..... Early stage investing requires an ability to go from failure to failure without any measure of diminished hope or exuberance. To me that implies a lot of the ex-corp dev guys and lawyers who are now active seed investors may drop off. ....... My relationships with teams I've invested with early on are like family as you are often in some pretty thick battles with them. ....... Right now we don't have enough competition in broadband and too much spectrum is tied up warehoused in too few hands.

Fred Wilson, 2006: Web 2.0 Is A Gift, Not A Threat, To VCs

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits

The page views count for this blog for today stands at 3,000, and the day is still young. What just happened? This makes it the best recorded day for the blog. The previous record was 1200 for a blog post that had the word Bill Gates in the title.

But most of the page hits for today have come from Google. Looks like this blog has managed to hit some kind of a sweet spot with the Google search engine. I am happy. But I can't explain. My blog posts today and yesterday have not been extraordinary.

On another note, my Feedburner count went from 2300 to less than 200 yesterday, and is still stuck around there today. I know Feedburner sometimes does that random act. But I am still anxious. Go back up, will you?

What Just Happened? May 2009

My page views for my Barackface blog yesteday stand at 1200. Most of that traffic is also coming from Google. That is the good kind of traffic.

Maybe I should put the Google ads back onto the blogs.

They say at 10,000 daily hits, you can make a full time income.

Slow Motion: Panda Bear

(Via Fred Wilson)
Rome - Phoenix W/ Devendra Banhart

Pages

Saturday, July 17, 2010

News: July 17

Friday, July 16, 2010

Reclaiming My Twitter Account

A 4 AM Traffic Peak, Mostly From Canada

Google's Metaweb Acquisition

Tech, Women, Diversity

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Darren Rowse's Seven Links Challenge

Traffic: Canada Top Country, 2 AM Peak

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Is The iPhone 4 In Trouble?

News: July 14

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