Lady Gaga

Biggest Open Source Company: Oracle, Google Or Red Hat?

Image via CrunchBase

There is a similar thing going on with blogging. Blogging started as a thing far flung individuals do. By now most of the top blogs are all corporate. Open source seems to share the story. So which do you think it might be? Which is the biggest open source company out there? Oracle, or Google?

We are all open-source companies now. Which also means that none of us are. Open source is simply a way that we enable some aspect of our businesses, whether we're Red Hat or Microsoft or Google or Facebook.

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Fred Wilson's Insight

At the end of his talk Fred Wilson says, "I think that was about 15 minutes, and now I will take questions." That so impressed me. Because that was exactly 15 minutes. How did he do that? I was watching him, he was not looking at his watch. This guy obviously has a black belt in pitching. His body has become a clock.










Okay, this clip 10 is huge. "Why would you want to live in an office park and suburbia when you are 21 years old when you could be living in Williamsburg?" I love this city, so does Fred Wilson. He loves it because he has called this city home a long time. (Did he grow up here?) I love it because this is the first hometown I ever had. I have a refugee's love for the city.

I think this city needs to go head to head with Silicon Valley. Fred shares that thought. I dig that. Silicon Valley is the big, old established company. New York City is the startup.



"The same qualities that make you a great entrepreneur make you a terrible manager." I so buy into that. Visionary startup people need good old school COOs. Keep the trains running on time while I go shake things up.



Fred Wilson is a VC like Al Pacino is an actor. This guy was born to be a VC. You will not see this guy retire for a long, long time because he loves his work so much.

I don't see Fred Wilson invest in my company, not now, not in any of my future rounds. He does what he calls "web services." That is his "domain expertise," his phrase. I make it very clear I am not in the dot com (Dot.con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era) space, at least that is not my step one, or two, and those two steps are a 10 year run easy. There we part. But that at some level makes it even more interesting for me to follow him online. I am not someone waiting in the wings thinking only if he knew me well enough, or he liked me enough, he would put his money down on my venture. The conclusion that he is not going to ride my boat gives me a certain detachment, a certain objectivity to enjoying him. Makes me more carefree.

His is my favorite solo blog. The guy is an avid user of many of the products of his portfolio companies. Like Dennis Crowley said some place when he was asked why he let Fred invest in his company. "Fred's entire family is on FourSquare!"

Like I said to the First Round Capital guy Charlie the other day over email, I have heard a lot of good buzz about you and your firm, that you do early stage very good, what I have not figured out yet is if you are stuck in the dot com space.

Fred Wilson: VC
Fred Wilson: A VC
Fred Wilson

Fred says he is in the "web services" domain, but he also bemoans the fact that New York City has not, has not shown any signs of producing a 50 billion dollar company. A company that is worth 500 million is a successful, wonderful company, but it is small. At 10 billion you are mid size. 50 to 200 billion is big. Fred's portfolio is crowded/littered with small to mid size promises. My company is going to be big. (An Immigrant Story For Brad Feld) In my book you can't stick to the dot com space and in the same breath bemoan not seeing any big promise on the horizon. Those two thought trains don't go together. I see a train wreck. So at some level I do feel like maybe I am not totally done with the guy yet. I should not write him off for me completely. 

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Happy Holi

Facebook Photo Album

Fred Wilson: VC

Ignite, Set It On Fire

I almost missed out Social Media Week, but I got in a few days late, and I was not able to go to some choice events I would have liked to go to. I bumped into its webpage through social media browsing. You know how you go from people to people, link to link, update to update. And I am so glad I was able to do 14 events during Social Media Week. (Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever)

And now I am being introduced to Ignite. My friend Adam Carson (@adamkcarson) sent me an email a few days back. He forwarded me this blog post: Global Ignite Week: Starts Monday with 65 Cities, 6 Continents, 500 Speakers over 5 Days. If he figured I might like it, he figured right.

This guy said somewhere online he was 30,000 miles above ground and the update went viral, looks like. Virgin Galactic anyone? He meant 30,000 feet. He was so psyched about having wifi up there, he went from feet to miles. To the @ and # symbols, Twitter should add emoticons. So less people get carried away.

Adam is a good friend of Mark Peter Davis (@markpeterdavis) who you can meet at every NY Tech MeetUp unfailingly. Nate always calls on him at the very beginning. "Is anyone from DFJ Gotham here? Mark? You there?"

"We go back a long time," Mark once said to me about Adam. Mark has a wonderful, wonderful blog. He has practically written a book on venture capital at his blog.

Entrepreneur's Guide To Raising Venture Capital
Entrepreneur's Guide To Starting A Company
Entrepreneur's Library
Entrepreneur's Social Fabric
Entrepreneur's Toolkit

Adam is up in Hanover finishing up his MBA at Tuck with his wonderful wife Anna. And he sends me this email.

New York City needs its own South By South West. New York City needs its own Burning Man. What would be the urban version? Modifying Dennis Crowley's (@dens) Pac Manhattan might be a start. For now Ignite might be it. But let's shoot for a non-sexist name.

Galapagos Art Space Dumbo
16 Main Street
Brooklyn NY

Thursday, March 04, 2010 from 6:30 PM - 11:55 PM (ET)

@ignitenyc
@tikkers - Ignite NYC Director; Curator
@sandhyaX - Site Design; Content Management
@Laureado - Event Production; Sponsorships
@jonathanpberger - Design Advisor; PowerPoint Guru

• Speakers
• Events

My tweet to the organizers: See you @ Ignite. Guess 2 late 2 be Speaker. Or no? Would like to talk revolution.

My tweets to some others who are listed as attending: Tweet 1, Tweet 2, Tweet 3, Tweet 4, Tweet 5, Tweet 6, Tweet 7.






It might be too late for me to get my five minutes on stage, but I think it is going to be a perfect evening to meet a ton of interesting people. It is amazing to be part of the tech ecosystem in this city. It is early stage and it is gelling.

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