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TechCrunch Did Not Build it; It Can’t Knock it Down Either

Posted on January 7, 2007 ·

(Updated)

Fred Wilson doesn’t like Mike Arrington’s deadpool:

“So I have to shake my head at the resurrection of the dead pool, which was made popular last time around by Fucked Company. Do we really need to celebrate when companies fail?”

No, we don’t, and I don’t think TechCrunch does.  Let’s be realistic: 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).

In fact Arrington’s latest post, Bubble, Bubble, Bubble is optimistic, despite the title:

“But this doesn’t mean we’re in a bubble. In fact, I think the exact opposite. I think a few failures are direct evidence that we are not in a bubble and that the private venture markets are actually in the process of letting off a little steam to keep things rational…

…I also disagree that too much money is chasing too few good ideas … Remember that VC’s business models are designed to fail most of the time – the majority of their investments are expected to go belly up, and they hope that just one or two out of ten have a big return…

…So every time a startup dies, I don’t think it’s evidence of a bubble about to burst. I think it’s evidence of a market that is working exactly as it should. Most companies fail, but enough win to keep the whole ecosystem healthy.”

This does not sound like deadpool celebration to me. Au contraire, it sounds like realistic, but still positive market assessment. 

Most companies in the “deadpool” are/were way overfunded for what they do. They, and their investors did not follow the model outlined in Fred Wilson’s excellent article, Web 2.0 Is A Gift, Not A Threat, To VCs. A must-read, IMHO.

Update (1/8):  Our little discussion made it to The New York Times.  

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Software, Startups, Technology ·
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Under the Radar Office 2.0 Conference – Call for Companies

Posted on January 7, 2007 ·

I agreed to be on the Selection Committee for the next full-day Under the Radar event by IBDNetwork. The focus will be Office 2.0  and 32 emerging startups will present on March 23, 2007, at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, CA.  The categories are being finalized, but they likely are:

  • Organize – Tasks, Database, Project, Notes, Bookmarks
  • Collaborate – Groups, Wiki’s, Spreadsheets, Word Processing, File Sending, Document Mgmt
  • Track – Time, Expenses, Budgets, Accounting, HR
  • Publish – Blog platforms, Web publishing, Feeds/RSS, Content Management
  • Communicate – Email, IM, VOIP, Voice, web conferencing
  • Create – Presentation Mngr, music, photo edit/manage
  • Personalize – Desktop, Calendar, personal organizers
  • Search – vertical, social, create your own.

Although I’m a bit late (what a surprisesmile_embaressed) there are still a few days left for new submissions, so if you know a startup in the above categories, please recommend them either in a comment below or by emailing me. 

IBDNetwork’s criteria for selection:

  • Unique value proposition
  • Ability to monetize product/business
  • Must be solving a problem
  • Market opportunity
  • Must still be considered “under the radar”
  • Company must be a actual startup – not a new product from a large company.
  • Series A or less in funding
  • Beta and beyond – must have customers/users testing and/or using the product in the market

Thanks for your contribution!

 

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, SaaS, Social Networking, Software, Startups, Technology ·
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Russian Rocket Falls on Denver, but it’s not WWIII

Posted on January 5, 2007 ·

In this tv report they still wonder if it’s a meteor shower, but now we now it was the remains of a Russian SL-4 rocket disintegrating as it re-entered the atmosphere.

 

Filed Under: Misc ·
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More Excuses for Not Doing a PC Backup

Posted on January 4, 2007 ·

We now have Fewer Excuses for Not Doing a PC Backup  says the New York Times.   Do we?  I really don’t want to do a backup.  Which does not mean I don’t want my data safely backed up – I just don’t want to have to *do*  it. smile_wink   I want it to happen without me ever worrying about – that’s exactly what some of the online backup services offer.

 I think the NYT is a bit harsh on Mozy, (my life-saver) by saying:

“Mozy offers dozens of novice-hostile options like “Enable Bandwidth Throttle” and “Don’t back up if the CPU is over this % busy.””

Novice-hostile?  Wow… let me try to translate it to really simple English: these are the best features, which allow someone to use the service without having to leave their computer on overnight.  You don’t need to have a fixed backup schedule anymore, Mozy runs in the background, uses your computer’s idle cycles, but slows down when you are using your machine.  It doesn’t get any better, IMHO: you’re always backing up, yet you never *know* about it. Invisible helper.

Not mentioning  ProtectMyPhotos is a glaring omission, IMHO, especially as the author makes the point of not including “Web sites that are exclusively dedicated to sharing photos or videos, like Flickr and MediaFire.”   ProtectMyPhotos is an interesting hybrid, offering many of Mozy’s features, yet allowing users to share, browse, manipulate photos online – see my review here.

Last but not least, TechCrunch has a good (albeit somewhat old) review of the online storage space.

 

Filed Under: SaaS, Software, Technology ·
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The Face of Tomorrow

Posted on January 3, 2007 ·

“What is the face of London, New York, Paris? What does a Londoner, a New Yorker, a Parisian look like?
The Face of Tomorrow is a concept for a series of photographs that addresses the effects of globalization on identity.
The large metropolises of the world are magnets for migrants from all parts of the planet resulting in new mixtures of peoples. What might a typical inhabitant of this new metropolis look like in one or two hundred years if they were to become more integrated?

The Face of Tomorrow attempts to find this face by taking photographs of the current inhabitants and compositing their faces to create a typical face. What we get is a new person – a mix of all the people in that city.”

The above example is from Amsterdam. Click on the pic to see all the 100 individual photos that made up the composites.  What’s striking to me is the resemblance between composites of Amsterdam, Sydney, Buenos Aires, London ..etc.   Instead of different national characteristic, I see a lot more commonality.  The Composite World Citizen smile_wink.  

Of course it has a lot to do with picking the location: Sydney, for example (not this one) has two sub-location, one being Sydney University, which, in the artist’s words is “a veritable United Nations. Out of about one hundred people I photographed there must have been over 30 nationalities including Ugandan, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, American, Canadian, Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Greek, Italian, German and English.”

Here are the cities covered so far.  If you have a camera and a little time, you can get your city included, just contact Mike, the artist.

 

Filed Under: Misc ·
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What’s Hot And What’s Not For 2007 – SVASE Panel in Palo Alto

Posted on January 2, 2007 ·

 • How much money is sitting on the sidelines, waiting to be invested?
• Where in the world will it go – Silicon Valley, India, China, somewhere else?
• How much will be available for seed and early stage investments?
• What will be the Hot market segments?
• What will be the Hot applications within these segments?
• Where will your money be going?

For answers to these and many other questions,  join us at a lively panel discussion moderated by VentureBeat‘s Matt Marshall this Thursday evening in Palo Alto.

The Panel:
• Ken Elefant, General Partner, Opus Capital
• Rob Rueckert, Senior Investment Manager, Intel Capital
• John Steuart, Managing Director, Claremont Creek Ventures
• Erik Straser, General Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures
• Ann Winblad, Partner, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

Schedule:

6.00-7.00 pm: Networking and Hors d’oeuvres
7.00-8:30 pm: Panel discussion and Q/A

For additional details and registration, see the SVASE site.  See you there! smile_regular

 

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Social Networking, Startups, Technology ·
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Selling Snow & Warm Air on eBay

Posted on January 1, 2007 ·

Colorado woman selling snow on eBay – reports the AP:

“Starting bids were holding steady Friday at 99 cents for snow from “Blizzard I and Blizzard II” being offered by Mary Walker. She and husband, Jim, got the idea for selling snow after shoveling mounds from two storms a week apart that together dumped more than 4 feet along the Front Range.”

This is hilarious – and it’s not even April 1stsmile_tongue.  I looked up the actual eBay bid – low and behold, the current bid amount is $56, $77 $102.50 and the bid was viewed 8968 times. 

This gave me the idea: so many people are unfortunate, stuck in cold climate, while I’m walking around in spring-like sunny California.  I think I’m gonna put up a few bags of warm air for sale on eBay.

Note: despite rumors, the Golden Gate Bridge is not for sale.

Update (12/31):  Here’s another interesting item to buy: dehydrated water.  smile_eyeroll

 

Filed Under: Humor, Misc ·
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The Official Google Blog is NOT a Blog

Posted on December 31, 2006 ·

  (Updated)

“The definition of “googol” is a number, and Google lives by numbers. So how else should we look back over the year but with numerical bits?”

That’s the opening line of A year in Google blogging, then it lists the number of posts, products unveiled, acquisitions ..etc.  There is one number remarkably missing: the number of comments.  I wanted to ask about this in a comment, but I couldn’t.   The Google Blog does not allow commenting. smile_sad.

They claim they love feedback: but the only way to leave feedback is by emailing them.  Hm, not much of “love” here, if you ask me.

Whatever happened to “conversation”?

I’m sorry, Google, you have Blogger, but until you open up commenting, you don’t have a Google Blog. 

Update #1:  Scoble is right, Matt Cutts does a better job for Google PR than this…

Update #2:  Mike at TechCrunch agrees, in fact he’s running a poll on the issue – worth checking a little later.

Update #3: The TechCrunch post drew a lot of attention to the subject, all of a sudden.  Quite a few commenters don’t feel comments are necessary – and ironically they make that observation in … yes, that’s right, comments.  In the meantime I re-read the Google post, and found this towards the end:

“And before long, perhaps you can begin leaving comments directly. We’re working on that.”

Hm.. that makes me feel a bit silly … am I pounding the table for something Google has already agreed to? I don’t remember having read this originally, but it could very well have been my mistake.  A quick check on Google cache finds a more explicit statement:

“Meanwhile, we really appreciate your interest and feedback, now visible through “Links to this post.” We know some of you would like to offer comments directly, and we would like that too, when we can add resources to the blog crew.”

 The cached version is time-stamped 5:18pm, while the current blog post has 4:23pm, so the earlier version appears to be live … go figure.  In the end, it really does not matter, what’s important is that the Googlers agree to bring the conversation on.

[Update to the update:  I was blind, sorry. The cached version is from the end of 2005.  Thanks to Ionut for pointing this out.  It’s pretty sad though… if commenting was already on the agenda in Dec 2005, and it still is, it tells us just how seriously Google takes this “promise”. ]

And as for the lack of resources, well, perhaps the solution isn’t formally hiring more “blogging crew”, but embracing Matt Cutts’s idea:

“- Each project at Google should monitor the blogosphere for issues. Reduce the disconnect to reduce the danger.

– Get more Googlers talking online. There will be some mistakes, but the conversations will be worth it.”

Blogging crew or not, let Googlers volunteer on the Google Blog.  I’m sure we’ll have a lively conversation.  

Update (01/02):  Amazingly this is the third day in a row this discussion  lives  on  TechMeme ….

Update (7/11/07):  Fred Wilson brings the subject up again:

“You can’t turn off the comments and have a truly interactive blog with a community. Comments are where it’s at in blogging. If I turned off comments, I’d quit blogging.

… A blog without comments is a one way medium. And that’s not as good as a conversation.”

I couldn’t agree more.  Unfortunately we’re seeing examples of just the opposite, like Marc Andreessen whose otherwise excellent blog is now commentless, or Zooomr, who simply turned off comments to redirect the conversation to their internal groups. 

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing / PR, Technology ·
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Typo Cost $600 and $8K Miles

Posted on December 30, 2006 ·

(Updated) 

German student wants to see his girlfriend in Sydney (of course the one in Australia) and finds himself on route to Sidney, Montana.  Unbelievable… read it on CNN.

Update (12/31)… Wow, I guess this is becoming the last “meme” of the year

smile_party 

I’ve just warned Ben Casnocha (comment) to make sure he does not end up in the wrong Boulder, and now I’m reading about Vinnie flying over Buda, TX.

Vinnie, what are you doing there?  You’re in the wrong Buda!

Here’s the real thing

smile_wink:

 

Happy New Year! 

martini 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Filed Under: Misc ·
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The Annoying Netli Test

Posted on December 30, 2006 ·

Is anyone else getting this junk all over their feed reader?  The WordPress test post is dated Oct 26th, but for the past two days it shows up randomly in just about any Attensa folder… I can’t keep up deleting it.

smile_angry

Update (2/5): Well, whatever it is, whoever they are, just got acquired. Congrat’s  ( I guess?). 

 

Filed Under: Blogging ·
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