Pitching Fred Wilson

Fred, here goes.

I have a startup idea. It is going to revolutionize search, social, mobile, local, and, and. One more thing. Yes, ecommerce.

This deal is so good you are not going to need to do another deal after this one, that good. You could go ahead and retire. That good.

This blog post is my message in a bottle to you. I am not going to email you, I have never called you, we almost skyped once, but all that is bridge under water (Sandy metaphor).

Here's hoping you will take the bait.

Sicerely,
Para.

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Pandora "Gets" Mobile

Image via CrunchBase

Mobile is not an easy nut to crack. Ask Facebook, ask Zynga. It helped that they started early. It also helps music is made for mobile.

First look: Pandora 4.0, the new mobile frontier

"We started thinking about creating a mobile service in 2004," Pandora CTO Tom Conrad told us in an interview. "We wanted to unify the Pandora experience." ..... and Pandora found itself one of the top five most downloaded mobile applications. Over the next four years 75 percent of Pandora listening shifted to smartphones. The company says that over 115 million registered users have tuned into the service on a smart mobile. The platform represents around 55 percent of its advertising revenue. ....... Pandora 4.0 for iOS smartphones goes live for download in the App Store at 5 pm EDT on Monday, 29 October. The Android version is going to take a little longer to show up in Google Play—"in the coming weeks," we were told. The upgrades arrive as the smartphone radio field is diversifying and expanding. Pandora still has a huge profile, but is hardly the only kid on the block. Spotify, Rdio, Last.fm, Turntable.fm all have big followings in the United States. Even Apple has been making noises about setting up a Pandora rival for the iPhone and iPad. ..... "When we launched in 2005, AOL and Microsoft were the largest services; MySpace was the gorilla in the room," Conrad noted. "Clear Channel was getting serious about iHeartRadio. What has allowed us to succeed despite stiff competition is that we are dedicated to the future of radio. We have a simple, elegant product to which we are devoted, and which we think we can produce better than anybody else." ...... Pandora says about half of its revenues go to performance royalties. The proposed legislation in both its Senate and House forms would put rates on a par with those paid by satellite and cable-based radio services. ...... the rates paid to various artists featured on the service. Two thousand will receive over $10,000 each over the next 12 months. "And for more than 800 we'll pay over $50,000, more than the income of the average American household"

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Finland In The Lead

Finland: Plan for universal 100Mbps service by 2015 on track

Back in 2009, Finland announced what might be the world’s most ambitious national broadband plan: a guaranteed minimum service level of 1Mbps for all homes and companies by 2010. That goal is then planned to be kicked up to 100Mbps, served via a fixed connection or wireless, by 2015 ...... by providing subsidies mainly to local cooperatives that have sprung up to serve rural communities. To date, 86 percent of the 5.35 million Finnish population lives within two kilometers of a 100Mbps connection, and the expectation is that this will grow to 95 percent by 2015. ...... European Union’s Digital Agenda for Europe. ..... requires member states to publish national broadband plans by the end of the year to bring a minimum level of 30Mbps service to all citizens by 2020. It also requires countries to bring speeds of 100Mbps to half of the EU’s households by 2020. (As one commenter pointed out, most of Denmark already has 32Mbps wireless coverage.) In other words, Finland is far surpassing what Brussels has mandated. ...... Karvia—like many small towns around the world—faces a challenge of keeping its younger population local. With more reliable Internet, it lets more creative and freelance workers stay in town. ...... “They can do remote work at home and so they have moved back to Karvia,” she said. “People like artists and people who are designing buildings can work at home and I think that this was very important for us to do. Also, they can study at home because the network has made a possibility to study.” ...... there may be a downside to better access ... “In the first year we had nine children born. Normally we have 20 children [per year]—maybe [couples] are watching TV too much” ...... It can cost up to €53,000 ($68,000) per household in the most rural and remote regions. ..... today, fiber optic broadband is at the level of a basic public service (like electricity, water, or roads). ..... “The Finnish strategy as it is does not seem to provide this but leaves it to market forces on one hand and to regional and local authorities on the other,” he told Ars. “The first actors have no obligation to fulfill their part, and the second actors are lacking realistic financial and political means.”

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