Startup CEO Who “Won’t Take VC Abuse” Is Now a VC Himself and Blogs About Both Sides of the Table.
Blogging, Startups June 12th, 2009
Valleywag named Mark Suster, then CEO of Koral “one entrepreneur who won’t just take VC abuse“ for his blog post “slamming one VC partnership for tardiness, inadequate preparation, and bad Blackberry manners.” That was late 2006…
Not long after the “incident” his startup, Koral received funding, which, in hindsight was probably unnecessary: a few months later, barely out with a beta product Koral got acquired by Salesforce.com.
A few months later the “anti-VC” (not really) CEO has become a VC Partner himself.
Tags: Blogging, entrepreneurship, koral, mark suster, Startups, vc, vc Funding, venture Capital, xref
How I Beat TechCrunch for the Second Time
Blogging January 22nd, 2009
First time I beat TechCrunch was in July 2006:
…their Feedburner subscription base grew almost 100% overnight. But it pales in comparison to my 2.5million % growth rate … yes, I went from 200 or so to 51k. Jeff Clavier did quite well, too, at 56k, but hey Jeff, I am catching up!
Too bad it was due to a Netvibes glitch, and once they fixed it, my readership fell back to – well, normal levels.
Today I am winning again: TechCrunch has 0 –yes zero – subscribers, while I have 1141. 
This time the culprit is Feedburner, which chucked the subscriber stats to zero for many blogs, including TechCrunch, while I lucked out, and only “lost” about half my subscribers. Over @ CloudAve we were less lucky, the migration to Google’s new setup cost about 85% of our subscriber base, but that still beats zero…
Yet it’s a Pyrrhic victory, which I hope won’t last – Feedburner (Google) needs to pull their act together.
Tags: blog feeds, blog stats, Blogging, feedburner, Google, rss, techcrunch
Moved: Feedburner Migration With Glitches
Blogging January 20th, 2009
Feedburner started as a cool new blog feed management/reporting service a few years ago, and quickly became a de facto standard. A quick scan of my Feed Reader shows hardly anything but Feedburner. Since Google acquired the company almost two years ago, we haven’t seen a lot of new services – but that does not change the almost monopoly status. Feedburner rules the market, and I’m no exception.
A few months ago Google started to migrate accounts – first only those who wanted to run Adsense in their feeds. Since I don’t care for advertising, I did not bother first, but knew the day would come: the final deadline is February 28th, but anyone can move to the new servers on their own schedule.
Seeing all the negative buzz on Twitter I was planning to wait – but then I “lost” 70% of my subscribers even with the old setup, so I figured I might as well take the plunge. And here it is now: a shiny, brand new (old) feed @ http://feeds2.feedburner.com/zoli.
Google says (FAQ) the stats will “recover” in about a week. Funny thing is, the one service entirely missing from the reports is Google’s very own Reader. I certainly hope this “loss” is only in the stats, and readers are receiving our feed without interruption. If you are, you don’t have to do anything, the old Feedburner URL will continue to be redirected, says Google. Then again, if you’re cautious (like I am), or perhaps are not following our feed yet, you might as well grab the new feed here.
Either way, thanks for reading my Blog.
Tags: atom, Blogging, bloog feed, feed reader, feedburner, Google, rss
Is There a New Twitter to Blog Spam Bot?
Blogging January 14th, 2009
An older post, If Scoble Thinks He Found Bad Startup Marketing, He Ain’t Seen Nothing received several comments, all showing the same structure, pointing back to Twitter accounts – some are clearly spam accounts with only this one update, but others appear to be real users, although I am not following any of them.
lbfd (LBFD) | January 13th, 2009 at 6:58 pm e
This is a test.
(This appears to be a spam account with no real content.)
aleslie2 (Art Leslie) | January 13th, 2009 at 7:59 pm e
Hmmm … tweet completely disappeared. This is a test.
(This appears to be a real account.)
bisfourbritt (bisfourbritt) | January 13th, 2009 at 9:52 pm e
This is a test. Nd it ends with no friends. We will go on…..untl it hurts
Zonin with loud shit tonightt hah
(This appears to be a real account.)
radiomanmic (Michael Grider) | January 13th, 2009 at 11:28 pm e
This is a test. Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through.
(This appears to be a real account.)
deborahgtaylor (deborahgtaylor) | January 14th, 2009 at 6:10 am e
Is going to Brenham for a quilting lesson. This is a test.
(This appears to be a real account.)
This is a test.
(This appears to be a spam account with no real content.)
Is there some new Twitter-to-Blog spam bot that I am not aware of?
Update: There’s more now, on another post:
lbfd (LBFD) | January 13th, 2009 at 6:58 pm e
This is a test.
Hmmm … tweet completely disappeared. This is a test.
This is a test. Nd it ends with no friends. We will go on…..untl it hurts
Zonin with loud shit tonightt hah
This is a test. Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through.
Is going to Brenham for a quilting lesson. This is a test.
This is a test.
sztelzer (Rodrigo Sztelzer) | January 14th, 2009 at 11:18 am e
Só bebo tequila. This is a test.This is a test.
http://tinyurl.com/7jww4a Só beberei tequila.
In the meantime I disabled the Tweetbacks Wordpress Plugin, which had not properly installed anyway, to see if it has anything to do with the attack.
Update: Follow-up thoughts @ CloudAve.
Related posts:
Tags: Blogging, spam, tweetbacks, Twitter, wordpress
Credit Crunch Has Reached Bloggers
Blogging, Humor December 26th, 2008
The Credit Crunch has reached the Blogosphere: it is now a Wordpress Theme by Ericulous, developer of the lightweight theme I use here.
I have not found a "Recession" Wordpress theme (yet), but there is one called Depression.
Tags: Blogging, blogs, ericulous, wordpress, wordpress themes
The Human Touch: TechMeme Getting Nostalgic
Blogging, Humor December 16th, 2008
TechMeme recently gave up trying to get a 100% working algorithm, instead Gabe switched to half-manual (edited) mode. I suppose and along with it came emotions, otherwise how could we explain TechMeme getting nostalgic. There’s an antique classic in the sponsors’ display:
Memeorandum – The Google for blogs on Microsoft’s Startup Zone. First I got suspicious – is someone recycling TechMeme’s original name for a new venture? But no, clicking through takes us to a fresh post just off the press, dated January 10th, 2005. Don Dodage announces:
Memeorandum is a new blog “news clipper service”. It constantly monitors new blog posts and publishes the title and first 50 words or so to the dynamic news page. The page updates every few minutes with new high quality material. There are currently two news pages. One for technology and another for politics.
Obviously a glitch, I don’s suppose you’ll see it long on TechMeme. Oh, and Happy Birthday, TechMeme ( the 4th, I suppose, more or less).
Tags: Blogging, memeorandum, techmeme
Uncov’s Back… Sort of.
Blogging, Startups October 18th, 2008
I’ve never particularly liked Uncov, the anti-web 2.0, anti-startup, anti-everything rug. Not that it was always wrong: it’s criticism was often well-deserved, just a bit too vitriolic for my taste. But vulgarity is popular, and titles like I’m Going To Scale My Foot Up Your Ass certainly grabbed attention.
Of course it’s always easier to criticise than actually build, and for Uncov editor Ted Dziuba the opportunity to put his money where his mouth was came when he finally launched his own startup, Persai – soon renamed Pressflip. To focus on the startup, Ted and his fellow authors shut down Uncov.
Will Pressflip make it? Too early to say, but TechCrunch wasn’t too positive about it a few months ago. (they can always rebrand it again, this time to Pressflop).
A few days ago Uncov came back to life, but with a twist: it opened up to guest bloggers. And here’s Dziuba’s Ars Poetica, which perfectly sums up why I still dislike Uncov:
If you want to blog at uncov.com, it should be in the style of Uncov. It doesn’t have to be technical or nerdy, and you should feel free to take shots at people, so long as you do it in the Uncov fuck-you-and-everyone-that-looks-like-you fashion.
The latest twist in the story: Ted Dziuba has just quit Pressflip.
I’m leaving for personal reasons: mostly because I’m going to be a father in March and need some stability, but also because I’m tired of the fight.
The announcement is on Ted’s personal blog, not Uncov. It probably does not meet Uncov standards. For the first time Ted Dziuba sounds perfectly normal. Family man. Human.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Pressflip Founder Quits: "I’m Tired Of The Fight"
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Tags: Blogging, entrepreneurship, pressflip, Startups, uncov, web 2.0
Turn the Doom-talk into Constructive Business Model Ideas
Startups October 12th, 2008
Image via Wikipedia
TechCrunch Turns Into F**kedCompany 2.0 – says Dare Obasanjo.
Really? Tell me something I don’t already know. Have we all forgotten that TechCrunch acquired FuckedCompany.com over a year ago? OK, that was just an April Fool’ s Joke , but you can really say TC is unprepared for a downturn – after all, they own FuckedCrunch.
OK, on a more serious note: I also said, way back in January 2007 that TechCrunch Did Not Build it; It Can’t Knock it Down Either:
TechCrunch did not build this boom. Yes, a well-timed review helps a startup gain initial traction, but Mike does not make those companies successful: whether they make it or not, they do so on their own. And when they fail, they fail own their own merits, too. Failures are part of business reality, and reporting on them only makes TechCrunch balanced. Without it Mike would be just a biased cheerleader (something he was accused of in the past).
I still mean what I said there, except that in the downturn there will clearly be more failures, and it won’t always be on a startup’s “own merits”. Reporting on them is part of reality.
But what I really hope for is that TechCrunch and other influential blogs that are a strong part of the startup ecosystem will take a constructive approach, and instead of becoming doom-reporters they start discussing ways of survival – i.e. how to tweak one’s business model to establish a healthy revenue stream.
I’ll have more on this soon.
Update: I’m often amazed at the image selection Zemanta proposes. The word “train” does not once occur in my post, yet it recommended this image of a train-wreck.
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Tags: Blogging, business model, fuckedcompany, recession, revenue, Startups, techcrunch
Steve Jobs Panic – the Anatomy of Fake News on Twitter
Blogging, Misc October 3rd, 2008
I often praised Twitter for being first reporting breaking news – typical examples were several recent earthquakes in Japan, China, New Zealand…etc.
This morning’s news brought panic, as hundreds of Tweets reported:
Steve Jobs was rushed to ER after severe heart attack.
AAPL took a nosedive, then recovered.
Fortunately the news turned out to be bogus. Citizen journalism failed today.
Read the full chronology over @ CloudAve.
(Oh, and while at it, you may want to grab the CloudAve feed. Thank you.)
Tags: AAPL, Apple, Blogging, Citizen Journalism, cnn, inews, Steve Jobs, Twitter
CloudAve: the First Week
Blogging, SaaS September 21st, 2008
Ah, the end of the fist week! The new baby, CloudAve is 7 days old! (..and I’m alive…)
We launched with a discussion on Harry Debes’s famous prediction, i.e. the imminent collapse of the SaaS market in two years. I doubt he realized just how much he re-energized the entire SaaS business, analyst obeservers – he certainly sparked a healthy discussion, even including Software Icon Dave Duffield, who refuted Debes’s argument. He should know, having been on both sides of the fence. (The podcast is available on CloudAve).
On my personal blog I don’t have to be as politically correct as on CloudAve, so here’s my summary: they tried SaaS, could not crack it, so concluded the market as a whole did not matter – a strategic mistake.. or… well, as they say, a picture says a thousand words. Ironically, the collapse of the US financial markets may just put things in a new prospective … more on this soon.
Ben compares the advent of Cloud Computing to corporate cars being replaced with allowances, while I present frustrating personal experience that could have gone smoothly using On-Demand tools.
We often talk about Cloud Computing and Software as a Service interchangeably, but are they really the same? Krish answers in a mini-series discussing the differences, i.e. segmenting out Infrastructure/Hardware as a Service (HaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). In the second part of his mini-series Krish goes on a myth-busting mission, clearing up several common misunderstandings. His piece on Governor Palin’s email hijack episode could very well be considered myth-busting, too.
Dan Morrill addresses why Anti-Virus in the Cloud can offer more efficient protection and is also major relief to owners of slower computers, whose resources can be completely bogged down by the frequent Av updates and scans.
Ben, so far the most prolific author reviews Oprius, an online productivity tool for sales professionals, then proves that the second “S” in SaaS is the most important, presenting two service / help desk oriented services: Zendesk and HelpStream. He discusses NetSuite’s launch in Australia, then starts a discussion on Channels, largely triggered by another NetSuite related move – this may very well become an ongoing thread.
Talk about threads, next week we are launching a new daily feature, CloudNews – the title says it all.
If you’ve been reading CloudAve, thank you, if not, why not head over and try … or perhaps just grab our feed.
See you on Cloud Avenue next week.
Tags: Blogging, cloud avenue, cloud computing, cloudave, On-Demand, SaaS
Zoli Erdos
