buzz

brycedotvc: I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career.I’ve...

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:05:50 -0500

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career.
I’ve lost almost 300 games.
Twenty six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed.
I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life.
And that is why I succeed. - Michael Jordan

via Amirik

I’ve always loved this ad.

Getting a startup job for the startup newbie

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:44:00 -0500

I’ve had the opportunity recently to chat with current undergrads on a couple of occasions and I’ve found myself repeating some of the same things. That usually begs for a blog post.

Getting a startup job requires focus. Pick a couple companies you would love to work for and figure out how you could be useful. The “spray and pray” method will not get you a job. Go deep on those companies you love. Make sure you can speak intelligently about why you love them and what you would do if you had the opportunity to help.

Reaching out to startups and telling them how much you love their product is never a bad idea. Reaching out doesn’t guarantee you get the job, but not reaching out guarantees you don’t get the job.

In my experience, people want to help smart people. Just show them you’re worth their time. Be prepared. Before meeting the person or jumping on the call, have a clear notion of what you want to get out of it. Even better, send the questions ahead of time. The person that does that, will get quality intros and more time in the future.

Startups don’t have a recruiting season. There are needs that exist currently and everything else is a maybe. This clearly varies depending on where on the spectrum the startup you’re interested in lies but don’t be surprised if 3 months out is too far for them to promise.

Early on there isn’t much of a recruitment process. Don’t take it personally if you don’t hear back immediately. Cultivate “politely persistent.”

What startups most need, is people who can get things done. When you reach out, show them that that’s what you’re about. Talk about the web app that you built that uses their api. Talk about (respectfully) the revised interface you put together, why it’s an improvement and how you’d go about testing it. Even talk about the survey you did of users of their product and what conclusions you’d draw. That’s very different from the person who sends a boilerplate email asking if there are any openings.

Make it as easy as possible for them to say “yes”. Asking them if there is any way you can help requires a lot of work on their part. I know it sounds crazy but you can get so busy that it’s hard to find the time to figure out if and how someone can help. Identify a problem or opportunity and explain how you can address it. Make it a proposal that makes it easy for them to just respond with, “Sounds great. When can you start?”

Color: A photo app truly worthy of our new cameras

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:51:55 -0400

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/23/color-looks-to-reinvent-social-interaction-with-its-mobile-photo-app-and-41-million-in-funding/

For those too lazy to read it, Color is a photo app, where all the content is public and the primary way of interacting with content and people is location. I’m really not doing it justice here but I don’t want to quote the whole TechCrunch article so check that out and you can find a richer explanation.

So I’m really excited about this app for a number of reasons. First, it’s audacious. This app isn’t like any of the current “social photo” apps. That’s going to be a little bit challenging for adoption, but God help me, I do love a bold plan.

It’s sad that at this point LBS is such a cliche. Mobile and location have been buzzy for a while for their own sakes but Color tries to realize some of that promise. Most social photo apps are the equivalent of analog cameras with social and location bolted on. You can add friends and see their photos. You can encode the photos with location so that you can see them on a map or access it later. But these are really just adding new features to old thinking.

Photos organized by location are far more interesting than text, which is most of what has been tried up until now. Viewing twitter updates or even a yobongo discussion can be hit and miss. Just because we share location doesn’t mean we necessarily share the same topic. You could sit right beside me and talk about people and events that I don’t know and/or don’t care about. If we are, however, sharing physical space, a photo of yours is at least going to be close to what I’m interested in.

Color is an app that couldn’t have existed before pervasive smartphone usage and leverages that. It’s not just a camera you carry all the time. It’s a device complete with a vast array of sensors that can capture and share media. Making the location the organizing principle and deriving my social graph with that data really do the device justice.

I want to use this app.

Now, I’ll also say that I like the current flock of social photo apps for what they are. Filters are fun. I’ve enjoyed consuming and sharing unique scenes and images. I like what Path is doing as well with their experimentation around group dynamics and what social means.

It’s clear that this rev of the app isn’t the end all be all of this dream. I like the vision and the direction but no one is saying this current release can’t be improved. I’ll be particularly interested in how they overcome the cold-start issues. This isn’t an app with a 1-player mode at all. This is going to be absolutely magical once all of my friends are on it but before that… That’s a really tough nut to crack and I haven’t seen in the current incarnation of the app any features that draw in new users.

I’m looking forward to the future of this app and also seeing this thinking cascade out to other tools.

Hi, we're Hot Potato.: State of the Potato Vol. 2

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:59:13 -0400

Hi, we're Hot Potato.: State of the Potato Vol. 2:

Sup, friendos!

First things first, we want to thank all of you for your support and feedback over the past several months.

Our goal at Hot Potato is to make it easy to share what you’re doing with friends and connect with others who have similar interests. We’ve been hard at work on some new…

A friend dragged me out to catch Manhattanhenge. I really should...

Mon, 31 May 2010 01:56:00 -0400

A friend dragged me out to catch Manhattanhenge. I really should dust off the camera more often.

hotpotatohq: Cooking up something good at Hot Potato...

Thu, 13 May 2010 15:50:22 -0400

hotpotatohq:

Cooking up something good at Hot Potato headquarters. Stay tuned.

"Realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever..."

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:08:00 -0400

“Realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced. You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again. Over and over and over.”

- Marc Andreessen

"There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born..."

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:02:41 -0500

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.”

- Here is New York, E. B. White, 1949 (via cdixon)

"If you are here, your network will be using all of the latest tools – Twitter, Foursquare, Quora,..."

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:01:00 -0500

“If you are here, your network will be using all of the latest tools – Twitter, Foursquare, Quora, Nexus One, etc., before other networks in other cities will. These networks hit critical mass here earlier and are thus more valuable to the early adopters here. You’ll have a 3-month+ head start on people outside to see what’s coming next. Imagine trying to design next year’s clothing without firsthand immersion in this year’s fashion, in Milan or Paris.”

- From a post titled “Why You Need to be in Silicon Valley”.

In general I hate posts like this. I don’t live in SIlicon Valley, but I do spend quite a bit of time there. I want to believe that twitter streams and blog comments allow anyone, anywhere to follow and make connections with the most plugged in silicon valley digerati. This ought to allow them to spot emerging trends from anywhere they chose to live without being sucked into the Silicon Valley echo chamber.

Is this wishful thinking or does being in Silicon Valley still give you an insurmountable edge?

(via brycedotvc)

I think this is just another case of how people assume their success is directly related to every choice they made and can recommend no other course. In my experience, if you ask anyone where you need to be to start a company, the chief indicator of what their response will be is where they live. If you ask if you should go to business school, the chief indicator is if they went. If you ask how to raise money, what investors, or just where to get your paper supplies, they go back to what they did.

Perfectly understandable but it completely overlooks all of the things particular to the person asking. Where should you start your company? Well, where is YOUR personal network the richest? Where can YOU find the best talent? Where are YOUR customers and investors?

Me? Thanks, but I’m going to ride this whole Brooklyn thing out. Viva la Hot Potato!

Went to see Fuerza Bruta at the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union...

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:50:00 -0500

Went to see Fuerza Bruta at the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square tonight. Good stuff.

mattlehrer: Good news is that I truly out did myself this year...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:35:05 -0500

mattlehrer:

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after two days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn’t realize that it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of the many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn’t take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.

We're live in the App Store!

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:39:27 -0500

hotpotatohq:

Great news - the Hot Potato app is live. Thanks very much to Apple for the approval.

You can download it here or can search for hotpotato in iTunes.

Lots more detail coming on this over the weekend, and we haven’t forgotten those who have signed up for an email. We’re working on on the web that will make things easier to use and understand for all of our new users.

Thanks again for all of your support!

"Entrepreneurship exists in the tiny space between madness and genius; and, its journey requires a..."

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:33:50 -0500

“Entrepreneurship exists in the tiny space between madness and genius; and, its journey requires a few cross border violations across both madness and genius to get to the final destination.”

- comment by JLM on the The Herd Instinct (via fred-wilson)

A Night with Hot Potato

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:01:07 -0500

joevc:

Twitter’s explosive growth and the iPhone app store have spawned a fresh batch of real-time data services. Many brilliant minds are searching for sustainable business models in the segment. Last night I tested out one of the most promising new players, Hot Potato.

The startup enables real-time, curated chats around live events. Users can create a discussion thread, either public or private, focused on a game, concert, conference, etc. Users can announce their participation to friends via Twitter and Facebook, then post text, photos, and videos, comment on individual posts or “like” them, view other participants’ profiles, and track “hot” posts.

I accessed Hot Potato via my laptop, as Apple has the iPhone app in review purgatory. I joined a discussion around the Patriots-Saints game. Per the image above, the Pats forced me to abandon the chat for the first ever Hot Potato Gossip Girl discussion, launched by Jon Steinberg, in what was no doubt an historic moment for the series.

The service was raw but has significant potential for both users and advertisers. Real-time user generated content faces multiple challenges, from information overload, to lack of editorial control, to accessibility. The confluence of Hot Potato’s capabilities addressing these issues could make it a winner.

Curation is the key to addressing both information overload and editorial control. There is an abundance of chat-based options around live events, but they’re typically overrun with blowhards like myself that will make insane claims about Brady Quinn’s ability to throw deep, or Shaq’s athleticism. This idiocy is half the fun, but the ability to mute the idiots when appropriate makes the experience more engaging. Hot Potato will allow you to focus on posts contributed by your friends or from strangers that are generating the most interest amongst participants.

Accessibility is addressed via smartphone apps, which allow users at the live event to share near-time, personal thoughts and visuals with viewers watching from home, bringing them closer to the real experience.

As an aside, I must say that despite all the complaints about the iPhone app store, it was the first, quasi-open platform with a critical mass of distributed handsets. Before its deployment, app developers had to break through with carriers, which is a Herculean task for any startup. Luckily the success of the iPhone is leading to more initiatives like the Blackberry app store and Joint Innovation Lab, an open mobile services platform launched by SoftBank Corp (disclosure: SoftBank Capital is an affiliate), China Mobile, Verizon, and Vodafone, which will address their 1 Billion aggregate customers.

Getting back to Hot Potato, I think the site has significant commercial potential for highly targeted, sponsored chats, if it can provide moderation tools such as filtering of foul language (which I was guilty of during the Pats performance last night) and offensive imagery. The inevitable deluge of spam will also need to be controlled, but users should be able to help police spam in real-time.

I look forward to tracking the progress of Hot Potato and other emerging players in the world of real-time data. Hot Potato’s iPhone app, which reportedly has superior functionality to the desktop version, is expecting an imminent release. You can be the first to know by signing up at their homepage.

Dharmesh Shah’s talk at Startup Bootcamp on inbound...

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:08:16 -0500

Dharmesh Shah’s talk at Startup Bootcamp on inbound marketing. If you haven’t given this any thought, the time it takes to watch this is the best possible use of your next 30 minutes.

patrickmoberg: Lessons from a Dog - My family never had a dog...

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:34:56 -0500

patrickmoberg:

Lessons from a Dog - My family never had a dog when I was younger, so I don’t know a whole lot about them, but recently there’s been a couple running around the office I work out of. Here’s a couple things I’ve picked up on.

Patrick is truly one of my favorite people and this is just one more example. Great talent and what’s more, he gets stuff done. He is always creating something.

"Many people ask my what Neoteny (my company’s name) means. It means the retention of childlike..."

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:47:12 -0400

“Many people ask my what Neoteny (my company’s name) means. It means the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood. I first heard it from Timothy Leary when we were working on a book together. (It was called “The New Breed” about the techno youth culture. We never finished it, but I still have a pile of notes. Maybe I should get around to publishing some of it someday…) Tim loved the word. He used it to mean all of the great things that you often lose in adulthood such as curiosity, playfulness, imagination, joy, humor, wonder, etc. It is a biology term that the people in evolutionary theory use to when discussing traits that we retain in adulthood like lack of body hair, etc. There is a good web site about Neoteny at www.neoteny.org. Adulthood in the past meant that you finished learning most of what you needed to learn and you switched to production mode and started focusing on repeating tasks and narrowing your focus. I think that with the amount of change in the world today, it is impossible to “grow up” and finish your learning. I think Neoteny will become more and more of a survival trait in the future.”

- i never knew what Neoteny meant. Now I do. It’s an excellent word and I agree with Joi about the increasing importance of it. I’m going to see him today a few times and will tell him so myself.

The Meaning of Neoteny - Joi Ito’s Web

(via fred-wilson)

The timing of these two showing up in my twitter stream was...

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:25:42 -0400

The timing of these two showing up in my twitter stream was great.

Don’t worry, boys. The Hot Potato is coming.

Malcolm Gladwell: Football, dog fighting, and brain damage

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:38:27 -0400

Malcolm Gladwell: Football, dog fighting, and brain damage:

mattlehrer:

Research released the findings of an N.F.L.-funded phone survey of just over a thousand randomly selected retired N.F.L. players—all of whom had played in the league for at least three seasons. Self-reported studies are notoriously unreliable instruments, but, even so, the results were alarming. Of those players who were older than fifty, 6.1 per cent reported that they had received a diagnosis of “dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, or other memory-related disease.” That’s five times higher than the national average for that age group. For players between the ages of thirty and forty-nine, the reported rate was nineteen times the national average. (The N.F.L. has distributed five million dollars to former players with dementia.)

…

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt called an emergency summit at the White House, alarmed, as the historian John Sayle Watterson writes, “that the brutality of the prize ring had invaded college football and might end up destroying it.” Columbia University dropped the sport entirely. A professor at the University of Chicago called it a “boy-killing, man-mutilating, money-making, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport.” In December of 1905, the presidents of twelve prominent colleges met in New York and came within one vote of abolishing the game. But the main objection at the time was to a style of play—densely and dangerously packed offensive strategies—that, it turns out, could be largely corrected with rule changes, like the legalization of the forward pass and the doubling of the first-down distance from five yards to ten. Today, when we consider subtler and more insidious forms of injury, it’s far from clear whether the problem is the style of play or the play itself.

…

In one way or another, plenty of organizations select for gameness. The Marine Corps does so, and so does medicine, when it puts young doctors through the exhausting rigors of residency. But those who select for gameness have a responsibility not to abuse that trust: if you have men in your charge who would jump off a cliff for you, you cannot march them to the edge of the cliff—and dogfighting fails this test. Gameness, Carl Semencic argues, in “The World of Fighting Dogs” (1984), is no more than a dog’s “desire to please an owner at any expense to itself.”

…

Professional football players, too, are selected for gameness. When Kyle Turley was knocked unconscious, in that game against the Packers, he returned to practice four days later because, he said, “I didn’t want to miss a game.” Once, in the years when he was still playing, he woke up and fell into a wall as he got out of bed. “I start puking all over,” he recalled. “So I said to my wife, ‘Take me to practice.’ I didn’t want to miss practice.” The same season that he was knocked unconscious, he began to have pain in his hips. He received three cortisone shots, and kept playing. At the end of the season, he discovered that he had a herniated disk. He underwent surgery, and four months later was back at training camp. “They put me in full-contact practice from day one,” he said. “After the first day, I knew I wasn’t right. They told me, ‘You’ve had the surgery. You’re fine. You should just fight through it.’ It’s like you’re programmed. You’ve got to go without question—I’m a warrior. I can block that out of my mind. I go out, two days later. Full contact. Two-a-days. My back locks up again. I had re-herniated the same disk that got operated on four months ago, and bulged the disk above it.” As one of Turley’s old coaches once said, “He plays the game as it should be played, all out,” which is to say that he put the game above his own well-being.

via Rob.

"This is an odd award. You’d expect it to come later in Obama’s presidency and tied to some..."

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:48:31 -0400

“This is an odd award. You’d expect it to come later in Obama’s presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the ‘hyper-power’ as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it’s a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was ‘normal history’ rather than dark aberration.”

- Josh Marshall (via langer)