How To Monetize Your Social Web Startup there really is no secret sauce to making money on the social web: you’re either selling ads or selling a product. ..... While it’s possible to generate revenue through a number of models, there are really only a few core monetization models. ..... Since ownership of mass distribution channels is becoming fragmented, advertisers are looking for targeted audiences that are most likely to purchase their product. ...... Whether it’s an information product or a physical good, there are massive opportunities to generate revenue from selling things. ..... Brand advocacy in the world of social media is something that has many marketers drooling but rather than spending all your time monitoring the conversation, try developing a high quality product or service. .... many internet entrepreneurs pretend as though there is a secret monetization model that they’ll release in the near future. There isn’t one.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Monetizing A Startup
How To Monetize Your Social Web Startup there really is no secret sauce to making money on the social web: you’re either selling ads or selling a product. ..... While it’s possible to generate revenue through a number of models, there are really only a few core monetization models. ..... Since ownership of mass distribution channels is becoming fragmented, advertisers are looking for targeted audiences that are most likely to purchase their product. ...... Whether it’s an information product or a physical good, there are massive opportunities to generate revenue from selling things. ..... Brand advocacy in the world of social media is something that has many marketers drooling but rather than spending all your time monitoring the conversation, try developing a high quality product or service. .... many internet entrepreneurs pretend as though there is a secret monetization model that they’ll release in the near future. There isn’t one.
Venture Capitalists And Their Thesis
Venture Capital Investment Thesis Myths For venture capitalists, an investment thesis states the main idea of their fund–essentially, why your venture fund exists, and what it proposes to invest in ..... does the company mesh well with our macro-economic analysis? Are they operating in a market we understand? What are the future expectations of the sector? .... many venture capital firms don’t have investment theses. Those firms also tend to not last. .... Like writing a presentation/business plan/executive summary, there’s no set procedure for creating an investment thesis. ..... investment theses only last a couple years ... investment thesis will most likely be constantly tinkered with
My Chrome Notebook Never Arrived
Chrome Notebook Pilot User?
The Chrome Notebook Needs No Anti Virus B.S.
Confirmed: I Am In Line To Get A Chrome Notebook
Toshiba Satellite To Macbook To Chrome Notebook
I am giving up on the idea that Google might ever ship me the Chrome Notebook. Not happening. Waited long enough.
Twitter ---> Instagram ---> FoodSpotting
Soraya Darabi on Good Morning America
The Next Web: Instagram and Foodspotting most popular iPhone apps at SXSWInstagram Magic
Instagram Wave
Does Google Have An Innovation Problem?
FoodSpotting Is The Next Instagram: that should be the rewording of my blog post from a long time ago: FoodSpotting Is The Next FourSquare.
Happy World Water Day
If there is anything that is at the center of the globe's development agenda, it is clean water. Water also just so happens to be my favorite substance. I like to play with water. After I am done with the sink, you will likely see leftover splashes. Some people have thought it is because I am an untidy person.
There is something about the formlessness of water that gets me. Water in its formlessness reminds me of the human mind. Water is what the human mind should be, often is.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Hoping To Meet Vivek Wadhwa
I have a Direct Message on Twitter from Vivek Wadhwa. Let's meet the next time you are in the Bay Area, he says. I shot him a quick email. Sure. On the other hand, the next time you are in New York, whichever happens first. I seem to think it against my religion to step outside the city boundaries. For a guy who has been everywhere in America. It's a phase.
Patrick Chen's Entrepreneur Exchange Summit
I met Patrick Chen at this Hackers And Founders MeetUp. He is a great guy. He said he was a MBA student at NYU, and he had teamed up with a techie friend, who was a full timer with a hedge fund, to form a gaming startup. I paid him the ultimate compliment. I suggested the two of them should team up with me on my startup. He said we can talk. We did talk. We became Facebook friends. We exchanged a few tweets. A few days later he said it is best he stuck to his gaming startup.
Long story short I am going to Patrick's conference on Friday. I tried to suggest they should waive the $45 fee for me since "I will be blogging about the event extensively before and after." Let's put it this way. I ended up having to pay.
Yunus Should Launch A Political Party
The father of microfinance - Muhammad Yunus - is being hounded in his own homeland. It is sad. But it is politics as usual in Bangladesh. Politicians get in the way. Now you know why Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, a blight on the face of earth. It is these people.
One Step Behind
My startup is a tech startup, but it is not a tech startup that has come up with or is trying to come up with the next big thing in tech. But it is first and foremost a tech startup. A for profit, high tech microfinance startup that will get the last mile done under its own brand name. That is the proposition.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Soraya Darabi: Top 5: Strike 3
Soraya Darabi
Social Media Is For Real
Ultimately It Is About Iran, Because That Is Where It All Started
Soraya Darabi In New York Magazine
Fred Wilson, Soraya Darabi: Both Crazy About Music
Happy FoodSpotting Day Soraya Darabi
Darabi Hits Top 5 Again At This Blog
FoodSpotting Is The Next FourSquare
Food/Social = Physics, Coding = Mathematics
Related articles
- (Founder Stories) Foodspotting's Soraya Darabi On Women In Tech (techcrunch.com)
- Iran Bans Rachel Ray, Jamie Oliver Cooking Shows on State TV (friendseat.com)
- Andy Plesser: Foodspotting, Crowd-Sourced Food "Journalism" Enterprise Raise $3 Million Venture Round (huffingtonpost.com)
- Foodspotting, Crowd-Sourced Food "Journalism" Enterprise Raise $3 Million Venture Round, Report (beet.tv)
- Foodspotting Raises $3 Million to Become the "Pandora of Food" (mashable.com)
- 100K Hungry iPhone Users Uploading Food Dishes to Foodspotting -- Android Users Joining Feast (beet.tv)
Mike Arrington Liked My Comment
On a big blog like - say TechCrunch - it might not make news that Mike Arrington liked your comment. But this blog is small enough that liking my comment makes Mike Arrington a big fish in a small pond.
Friday, March 18, 2011
The Anne Hathaway Effect
..... when Anne Hathaway was in the news, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway's shares went up. He pointed to six dates going back to 2008 to show the correlation.
The Two Poles Of My Social Reality
This was not always the case, and it might change down the line, but as of now there are two poles to my social reality.
A Little Bit Of Untidyness, A Little Bit Of Randomness, A Little Bit Of Chaos
Things Organized Neatly
Unless my workspace is a little bit untidy, my creative juices don't flow. I need a little bit of untidyness, or maybe even a lot. I could not say I am going to work out at seven in the morning every morning. That would be too much order. I need my days to be a little more random than that. Freehand exercise speaks to
Image via Wikipedia me like that. The chances of randomness are even greater. I rebel against the routine.
I am a late to bed, late to rise kind of person. It was such relief to learn - a long time ago - that that is a body clock thing. Otherwise wisdom was that the good people wake up early.
Unless my workspace is a little bit untidy, my creative juices don't flow. I need a little bit of untidyness, or maybe even a lot. I could not say I am going to work out at seven in the morning every morning. That would be too much order. I need my days to be a little more random than that. Freehand exercise speaks to
I am a late to bed, late to rise kind of person. It was such relief to learn - a long time ago - that that is a body clock thing. Otherwise wisdom was that the good people wake up early.
Immigration Limbo
- Abraham Lincoln
I think I am about six, seven months from my green card. Too bad they have not started work on immigration overhaul in DC yet, or they might have heard a mouthful from me already.
I can't incorporate a company. The last time I raised 100,000 dollars - for my last startup - I put the money into a bank account run by someone else on the team, an American citizen. That was not my first choice.
I have figured if I can raise some money now, I can always get someone else to do the incorporating and arrange for them to get me as the first hire at 99.9% ownership. That would be a $10,000 value for them for the simple act of incorporating.
This is such a fucked up situation to be in. This is not about not having a good idea, this is not about not having the smarts, this is not about not being able to build a team, this is not about traction or product-market fit, this is about stupid paperwork. This is a shame.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Domo: The Pandora of People?
Only the other day I said for me I wanted a FoodSpotting for people. FoodSpotting says it is the Pandora for food. And looks like I have come across an app that is the Pandora for people. But I'd not call it the FoodSpotting for people. I have a feeling that will have to be a Hashable feature. Domo's dipping into Facebook is cool, but it should also allow for the kind of people you end up meeting. An ideal app would let you meet people and rate them. That might start a few fights, at least some hurt feelings, but nothing that a tight privacy setting can not solve.
Netflix And Original Programming
GigaOm: For Netflix, a Risky Bet on Original Programming: Netflix is reportedly in talks to score its first original programming, bidding against cable networks like HBO for the rights to a new project called House of Cards that would star Kevin Spacey and be directed by David Fincher. ..... ected, that still put the price tag for a single series at about half the amount that Netflix has been paying for entire libraries of long-tail content ...... Instead of relying on premium cable networks like Starz and Epix to stream their on-demand content, or waiting years for popular titles to fall out of the pay TV window, Netflix bet big on a deal with indie studio Relativity Media that would give it exclusive access to the indie studio’s movies. It looks like that bet will pay off, as The Fighter, with Academy Award winners Christian Bale and Melissa Leo, will soon appear exclusively on Netflix, rather than going to one of the cable networks....... The overwhelming sentiment in Hollywood seems to be that Netflix will get the scraps that no one else wants. “What used to be called ‘reruns’ on television is now called Netflix,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes has been equally dismissive in the past, saying that he believes Netflix will be a place for low-value content that networks and studios can’t syndicate anywhere else...... One of the arguments that cable networks and distributors like to make about the effect that Netflix — and online video in general — has on the broader TV ecosystem is that by disrupting current business models, Netflix is essentially destroying the engine through which high-quality content is created. ..... could be good news for the future of what we think of as “TV programming.”Netflix always needed to be about original programming. Netflix needed to be about indie movies. Netflix needed to release movies. As in, you make a movie, and you release it on Netflix. Like Apple has the iPhone app store, Netflix needs to become that place where you place your movies once you make them. If people watch your movies, you make money.
The idea of having to beg old movie houses to run their old movies has been weird. First of all, they don't seem to get the technology. Should be the case that business models chase technologies, but instead we have technologies on a lookout for business models.
Better late than ever. I am so glad Netflix is getting into original programming. This is the way it always needed to be.
More Sam Walton Than Bill Gates
My startup is a tech startup, sure. But it is first and foremost a high touch startup. Face time is key to my operations to be.
I keep thinking in terms of companies like Zappos. Zappos sells phone calls, not shoes. Customer service is key to how Zappos rolls. I also end up thinking about the offline components of companies like GroupOn.
Walmart early on became a major user of computer technology. Walmart collects so much data. Every transaction is valuable data. And you can only hope to make meaningful sense of all that data if you employ computers. So that's there.
But in microfinance, you can do all the tech trick in the parlor, but it still boils down to face time. The most precious time you will spend with your customers will be in person. Technology helps, but technology can't be front and center, that space is reserved for flesh and blood people.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Hack Of A Job
Solution: Don't use public wi-fi. Especially when you have half a million followers on Twitter. Use only secure wi-fi. Better still, carry your own. Carry one of those phones.
Ashton Kutcher's Twitter account was similarly hacked at TED. TED! Think about that. Some millionaire hacker must have did that.
Looks Like FoodSpotting Rocked Austin
Ashton Kutcher's Twitter account hacked | ZDNet
Looks Like FoodSpotting Rocked Austin
I am most definitely going to Austin next year. It's a done deal. A startup I have been rooting for - FoodSpotting - looks like had a field day Sunday. 4,000 showing up for one event: it is called the street smart way of becoming the number one event at the Kumbh Mela of tech. Were they the number one event? I don't know. But 4,000 is a large number, no matter how you measure it.
There were so many launches and relaunches this year at SXSW, this magic number - 4,000 people - alone gives FoodSpotting an edge. They get to go home and claim this year - SXSW 2011 - was FoodSpotting's year. If those 4,000 people downloaded the app as they munched, this is going to be the year the service crosses the 2-3 million download mark. Three million would be half way to FourSquare. Two million would be on par with Instagram.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Offline Mode
I have been offline several days in a row now. Glad to be back online. Thank God for scheduled posting, I have still managed to blog daily.
I stayed away from Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Quora, AVC, Hacker News, TechMeme, Gmail, Google News, the whole nine yards. It was an experience. I missed the internet bad. But I also learned it is really important to be with people when you are with them, like really be with them. I used to be really good with it, and I am still not someone who is permanently glued to the smartphone when out and about - I take the time to smell the roses - but I still was not doing as well as I wanted to do.
I have some work cut out for me.
Time spent offline made me want to try out a phase of staying away from the usual suspect sites for a while to focus on only blogging about my startup idea. Time spent offline made me want to churn out a 100 page autobiography to feed to Amazon Kindle self publishing. Do you think people will buy? I am tempted to give it a try. I think I have a story to tell.
I am glad to be online. But staying offline several days in a row was a necessary exercise.
(Blogging live from the Apple store on 59th Street)
I stayed away from Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Quora, AVC, Hacker News, TechMeme, Gmail, Google News, the whole nine yards. It was an experience. I missed the internet bad. But I also learned it is really important to be with people when you are with them, like really be with them. I used to be really good with it, and I am still not someone who is permanently glued to the smartphone when out and about - I take the time to smell the roses - but I still was not doing as well as I wanted to do.
I have some work cut out for me.
Time spent offline made me want to try out a phase of staying away from the usual suspect sites for a while to focus on only blogging about my startup idea. Time spent offline made me want to churn out a 100 page autobiography to feed to Amazon Kindle self publishing. Do you think people will buy? I am tempted to give it a try. I think I have a story to tell.
I am glad to be online. But staying offline several days in a row was a necessary exercise.
(Blogging live from the Apple store on 59th Street)
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Speaking Invitation
Like Mark Pincus said once, when you become successful and visible as an entrepreneur, you end up with all sorts of speaking requests, panel requests, media interview requests. Often times you have to choose between making those appearances and getting actual work done.
Well, I don't have that problem yet, just like I don't have an inbox problem either. I just have been complaining on Fred Wilson's behalf.
Notice how this email has been composed like I have a personal assistant who reads my emails for me. I don't have one of those. You can talk to me directly, that's fine.
Idea to Initial Execution
- Paul Graham
March 25: Stern: Entrepreneurs Exchange Summit
TechCrunch: If Execution Is What Matters, Where Does That Leave Ideas?: the process of getting a great product out there is a vital part of what constitutes innovation in the first place.The saying that it is not the idea, it is the execution is cliche in the industry. I am going to argue to the contrary. Ideas matter. Big, unsexy companies execute all the time. When a Marco leave a Tumblr to launch an Instapaper, that is not to say he got dissatisfied with Tumblr's execution, and decided he could do a better job at it, and so he left. It was not about the execution. Tumblr's execution is the most sophisticated it has ever been. He left for the idea.
Apple Refuses To Get Categorized
TechCrunch: Before It Even Begins, Apple Wins SXSW: Apple will be opening a temporary store in downtown Austin for two weeks beginning on yes, Friday, March 11. This will be in the Scarbrough Building on Congress Avenue ...... Work began on the 5,000 square-foot space on Wednesday, and they’ll undoubtedly be working around the clock to get the space done in time. ..... to sell a metric ton of iPad 2s. ...... If there’s one thing SXSW is good for, it’s for flash mobs and hive-think. Once a few people see others with iPad 2s in their hands, everyone is going to want one. This temporary Apple Store is probably going to be the hottest venue in Austin for the week. ..... I just hope the temporary store has the rock-solid free WiFi that regular stores do.What is Apple? Is it a PC company? Is it a post-PC company? Is it a smartphone company? Is it a hardware company? Is it a software company? Apple refuses to get categorized. In that it reminds me of Nokia.
Instagram Wave
TechCrunch: Instagram Now Adding 130,000 Users Per Week: An Analysis: Since launching just six months ago, Instagram has quickly become one of the web’s top photo sharing services. The company recently passed the two million user mark and announced the launch of their API....... Instagram is currently adding 130,000 registered users per week ..... Instagram’s 2.2 million users upload 3.6 million new photos per week (or 6 photos per second) ..... 37.5 percent of registered users have never uploaded a photo ..... 5 percent of users have uploaded over 50 photos ..... 65 percent follow nobody, and only 12 percent of users follow more than 10 people .....For users who upload at least one photo, there is a 45 percent chance they will upload a photo the following week ..... Those same users have a 25 percent chance they will upload a photo 12 weeks later, representing a significantly stronger retention rate than Twitter...... If it maintains its current pace, Instagram will continue to add a million new registered users every two months. ..... 37% of Instagram’s users have never uploaded a single photo and 65% have uploaded fewer than three photos. ..... This glut of inactive users is common in free online services, as we saw in our studies of Twitter Data and Foursquare Data last year. This isn’t necessarily a lack of total engagement, as users can use the app to simply follow their friends’ photo streams. ...... over half of Instagram’s users are following exactly one other user, with another 13% not following anyone ..... the vast majority of users who follow only one other user are following the “Instagram Team” account ..... 65% of users effectively follow no one. ...... Only 12% of users are following more than 10 people. ...... 76% of those users who upload their first photo go on to upload a second, 85% of those users go on to upload a third, and so on. ...... average time between any two uploads made by a single user is 43 hours ..... With each new photo uploaded by a user, the expected time until they upload their next photo decreases. ...... 45% of users are still uploading photos in Week 2, but that number drops down to around 25% by Week 12...... users who continue to upload are uploading photos at a faster rate as time goes on. ...... users acquired during such press flashes are, on average, more likely to churn than new users who came in through other channels. We’ve seen this trend in countless other businesses.Greplin is a sibling company to Google. Greplin is a search engine. (Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited) The Huffington Post is a content company. It is pre Google.
It has been my contention that Instagram has been a sibling company to FourSquare and Gowalla. It is a check in company. Only you are not checking into a physical space, a business establishment, but rather a moment. It has hit some kind of a sweet spot.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
March 25: Stern: Entrepreneurs Exchange Summit
EEX Annual Entrepreneurs' Summit
Hosted by Entrepreneurs Exchange Club
When: Friday, March 25, 2011 at 4:00pm 9:00pm
Where: Kaufman Management Center, NYU Stern, Room 1-100
Ticket price: $45 (Non-Stern Ticket)
1st Annual EEX Summit
Keynote Speaker: Seth Godin
Panelists
Chris Dixon, Co-Founder - Founder Collective (SEO Is No Longer A Viable Marketing Strategy For Startups)
Alexis Ohanian, Co-Founder - Reddit, Breadpig, Marketing - Hipmunk (How reddit became reddit - the biggest smallest community online)
Eric Wiesen, General Partner - RRE Ventures
Ian Sigalow, Partner - Greycroft Partners
Brian Hirsch, Managing Director & Co-Chairman - Greenhill SAVP
Charlie O'Donnell, Principal - First Round Capital
Jason Finger, Founder - Seamless Web
Idan Cohen, Co-Founder & VP Product - Boxee
Sam Hamadeh, Founder - Vault
Soraya Darabi, Co-Founder & VP Business Development - Foodspotting
Jen Fleis, Founder - Rent the Runway
Mike Yavonditte, Founder, CEO - Hashable
Vin Vacanti, Founder - Yipit
Jesse Hertzberg, SVP Business Development - SquareSpace (former VP Operations & Business Development at Etsy)
Peter Shankman, Founder & CEO - HARO
Sean Black, Founder & CEO - SalesCrunch
Giff Constable, Co-Founder & CEO - Aprizi
Seth Berkowitz, Founder - Insomnia Cookies
Sleep More Important Than Food: But I Knew That
Harvard Business Review: Sleep is More Important than Food: When researchers put test subjects in environments without clocks or windows and ask them to sleep any time they feel tired, 95 percent sleep between seven and eight hours out of every 24. Another 2.5 percent sleep more than eight hours. That means just 2.5 percent of us require less than 7 hours of sleep a night to feel fully rested. That's 1 out of every 40 people. ...... When I ask people in my talks how many had fewer than 7 hours of sleep several nights during the past week, the vast majority raise their hands. ...... We've literally lost touch with what it feels like to be fully awake. ...... In Anders Ericcson's famous study of violinists, the top performers slept an average of 8 ½ hours out of every 24, including a 20 to 30 minute midafternoon nap some 2 hours a day more than the average American. ...... The top violinists also reported that except for practice itself, sleep was second most important factor in improving as violinists. ...... I go to great lengths to assure that I get at least 8 hours every night, and ideally between 8 ½ and 9, even when I'm traveling. ...... the overnight "redeye" from California to New York, but I'm asleep by takeoff — even if takes an Ambien. When I get home at 6 or 7 a.m., I go right to bed until I've had my 8 hours. What I've learned about those days is that I'd rather work at 100 percent for 5 or 6 hours, than at 60 percent for 8 or 9 hours. ..... Go to bed earlier — and at a set time. ..... Start winding down at least 45 minutes before you turn out the light. You won't fall asleep if you're all wound up from answering email, or doing other work. Create a ritual around drinking a cup of herbal tea, or listening to music that helps you relax, or reading a dull book. ...... Write down what's on your mind — especially unfinished to-do's and unresolved issues — just before you go to bed.
Zite: A Challenge To The Social Paradigm
Food/Social = Physics, Coding = Mathematics
Amit Kapur Might Be Upto Something
Social Is A Pendulum Swing
The Next Big Thing In Social Networking
That would make room for all sorts of services that portend to be the Pandora of this, the Pandora of that.
2015: A Mobile Tech Company Will Storm The Room
2011-2015: A Mobile Stretch
HTML 5 And The Small Screen
I am a browser bigot. I have been suspicious of the native apps on the smartphones. They have always felt ad hoc and temporary to me. They have been like mosquitoes to the swamp. You drain away the swamp and the mosquitoes are gone. You make universal wireless broadband a reality and the native apps are gone.
I Am A Browser Bigot
The Browser Will Rule The Mobile Web As Well
A Boxee Browser
Mac App Store: Bullshit
Tim Berners-Lee: Long Live the Web
Fred Wilson On Android And HTML5
I Am A Browser Bigot
The Browser Will Rule The Mobile Web As Well
A Boxee Browser
Mac App Store: Bullshit
Tim Berners-Lee: Long Live the Web
Fred Wilson On Android And HTML5
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Dave McClure: Fighting Words For The Angel List
If you follow tech in the blogosphere, it is hard to miss out on Dave McClure. I read this blog post of his the day it came out, but only today found out he was one of the people behind something called the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network. This guy is of interest. I have been meaning to comment on his post about The Angle List.
The Angel List Controversy, Fred's Marketing Controversy
This South By South West Thing
Okay, Ron Rofe, put in the first 10K. Send me to South By South West. All I would need is a two way plane ticket. How would I do that? I have never bought a plane ticket in America. How would I go from the airport to downtown? I don't think the A train works there. Where would I stay? I guess by now it's too late to be making hotel reservations. If it is warm enough, I could sleep anywhere. I could sleep by the roadside.
I actually sent emails to three people I know. One bounced back. Another did not respond. The third said he was in San Antonio. Maybe somebody who already has hotel reservations will let me squeeze in. I don't need a mattress, no blanket. But I do sleep. I am one of those seven, eight hours kind.
Two AVC MeetUps Two Days In A Row
I thought I was headed to an AVC MeetUp tonight. I thought so yesterday. I still think so. But then I have an email this morning about an AVC MeetUp that is scheduled for a different day - tomorrow - and a different venue, although still near Union Square.
I did some digging. I have come to find out there are two AVC MeetUps two days in a row, and I don't think Fred Wilson is coming to either of them, which I believe is fine. The guy puts plenty of time churning out blog posts, and reading every single comment left at his blog.
So here's the update.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011 7:00 PM
Olives @ W Hotel - Union Square
201 Park Ave. South
(@ 17th St.)
Gramercy
Wednesday, March 9, 2011 8:00 PM
Smyth Tribeca
85 W Broadway (Chambers St 1/2/3)
New York, NY 10007
Monday, March 07, 2011
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