Posts from August 2004

A commenter to my post on alternative energy wants me to put my money where my mouth is and invest in alternative energy.

At first blush, that makes a lot of sense.

But the problem is that we don’t invest only our money in venture deals. We invest other people’s money (called Limited Partners) as well as our money in our deals.

And so we limit what we invest in to things we know a lot about. Things we’ve learned about the hard way, by making mistakes and learning from them.

As interesting as alternative energy is to me, I can’t say that I know enough about it to even begin to think about investing in it.

The same is true of genetic engineering. It’s amazing science. There are plenty of people who are qualified to invest other people’s money in it. But I am not one of them.

So, if the post is about information technology, then I intend to put my money where my mouth is. If its about alternative energy, biotech, music, travel, food, wine, or another of my interests, don’t count on it.

You’ve heard me rant on our dependence on foriegn oil and how we need to invest in alternative energy sources to reduce that dependency. If not, read this, and this, and this.

Today, a reader emailed me about an alternative energy blog. I’ll add it to my RSS reader and blogroll. Although I don’t invest in alternative energy (because I don’t know enough about it to do it well), I sure am interested in it.

Rafat Ali has a rant today on the current VC love affair with mobile games. I read the WSJ piece today on all the VC investments in mobile gaming and had exactly the same reaction as Rafat.

I think this is going to end badly for a lot of these investments. For one, its too much money in the individual companies. For another, there are too many “me too” investments. Overfunding and me too investing are the two most rampant diseases in the venture business today.

It looks like mobile gaming is the latest industry to catch that disease. And its too bad. Because its a nice niche market that could have produced decent returns for a few VCs. But not for the whole industry.

John Batelle has a great chart of the cost per lead of various direct marketing methods. It comes from Safa Rashtchy.

What is amazing to me about the chart is not that paid search is the lowest cost direct marketing medium, we all know that. It’s that email is right behind and almost as cost effective. If that’s the case, why is paid search growing so much faster than email?

Well there’s quite a bit of negative chatter on blogs lately about Change This. Jeff Jarvis takes a pot shot at Change This today even before he’s read the stuff. That’s really open minded Jeff.

Anyway, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am a friend of, fan of, and former investor in Seth Godin, the mastermind behind Change This. Seth is full of good ideas, some that pan out, others that don’t. But at least he’s not afraid to try something new, to change things.

This time, he and his band of change agents are out to change media. That’s a tall order and I am not sure it will work. But I am sure game to help them out. So I’ve agreed to read the manifestos and review them.

I’ve read five so far and one of them is really good. It’s called The Art of the Start and its a short primer on how to start new businesses.

I highly recommend Art of the Start to anyone thinking about starting a business. I particularly like the Make Meaning, Make Mantra, and Get Going sections. In fact, I think I’ll start using the Make Mantra as my own Mantra with entrepreneurs.

You can click here to download the first chapter of Art of the Start and read about making Mantra yourself.

I try to go to see live music as much as I can. There’s no better way to get to know a band, its music, its repertoire, and its musicians.

Last week we went to see Modest Mouse. We only knew one album, the terrific Good News for People Who Like Bad News, which in my mind is certainly one of best album of 2004 so far.

The band played a lot of songs that I really liked but hadn’t heard before. So I went searching around the Internet for a set list which I never found. But along the way, I came across a bootleg CD that the band sells off their website called Baron Von Bullshit Rides Again. It’s a live recording of a show earlier this year. And it has most of the songs that they played at the show we went to last week. So I bought it.

It’s really great. Live versions of songs like Paper Thin Walls, 3rd Planet, Bankrupt on Selling, and the massive Doin’ The Cockroach are on it.

One of my favorites is Broke. So its my MP3 of the Week.

Brad Feld adds to the bootstrapping discussion on his blog.

Typical Brad – very detailed, well organized, great advice.

The title of this post could mean a lot of things these days.

It could be a description of Jeff Jarvis’ life 🙂

It could be a description of how news of the McGreevy affair broke.

But in this case, its about a movie and a blog.

Specifically a movie called Garden State that The Gotham Gal and I went to see this weekend with a friend.

The Gotham Gal loved it. It’s a great movie to take a wife, girlfriend, or any other woman in your life to.

I liked it too. But didn’t love it. The one liners are great. The characters are quirky. And it makes you laugh. I think its a young person’s movie to a degree. A lot more Gen Y than Baby Boomer. But fun nonetheless.

The soundtrack is great. I bought it after seeing the movie.

But possibly the coolest of all is that Zach Braff, the writer, star, and director of the movie has been blogging his life and the movie for the past 3 weeks. It’s certainly another way to promote the movie, but you can read his thoughts on the R rating, the soundtrack, and the McGreevy affair too. I like it.

Seth Godin is the king of the phrase. Permission Marketing, Idea Virus, Purple Cow, Free Prize. They all mean something important in the evolving world of business we live in.

And yesterday, he coined a new one, just in time for the Summer Olympics. He calls them Torchbearers.

It’s what we look for most of all in deals. Someone who will carry the torch all the way. Go read Seth’s description. It’s right on and inspirational to boot.