Posts from November 2006

  Making Stuffing 
  Originally uploaded by fredwilson.

I’ve been grumpy lately. For no reason really since I am an incredibly fortunate person with so much to be thankful for. Fortunately Thanksgiving has come around at a good time and reminded me of that fact. So here are some of the many things I am thankful for this year.

• My family – The Gotham Gal, Jessica, Emily, and Josh (and Lucky)
• My parents who are alive and well, traveling around and living life to its fullest.
• My brothers and their families (yes D you are family)
• The Gotham Gal’s family even though they are enjoying a warm and sunny thanksgiving in southern california while we watch it pour here in long island
• Our friends and their families, some of whom we’ll eat thanksgiving dinner with today
• My two businesses, Flatiron and Union Square, and my partners in each of them, and all of the people who have worked in these businesses over the years.
• All of the entrepreneurs that I get to work with on a daily basis, particularly the ones whose businesses we’ve invested in. Having a front row seat to your roller coaster ride is the best job I could ever imagine.
• Claire McCaskill and Sherrod Brown, who came up winners this year and made us proud. And Jim Webb for wearing his son’s combat boots and showing that being against the war in Iraq doesn’t make you any less a patriot and a hero. And everyone who came out and voted this year and showed that democracy is alive and well in the United States.
• New York City for being the greatest place in the world to live, where kids who live in penthouses and projects can be best friends, where race,religion and sexual preferences are no big deal and people smashed together on subway trains figure out how to get along every day.
• The Internet for being "the new new thing" and continuing to play that role and getting better and better at it every day.
• For the musicians from Bob Dylan to Mike Skinner and everyone in between who provide the soundtrack to my life and the Internet music services like Rhapsody, Hypemachine, Last.fm, Streampad, Wolfgang’s Vault, eMusic, iPod/iTunes, and many more that have made being a music fan easier and better than ever.
• For blogging and social networking which has made my life richer, made me so many new friends, and caused me to think and write like never before.
• For online video, from YouTube to Wallstrip, and everything in between for getting me to enjoy video entertainment again.
• For Guitar Hero II which we got this week and starting playing last night.
• For you, the people who read this blog, comment on it, link to it, and engage with me and my life every day. You have enriched my life and I truly appreciate it.

UPDATE: Charlie has posted his thanksgiving list (pretty similar to mine) and encouraged others to post others they come across (or post) to delicious with the thanksgivinglist tag. Cool idea Charlie.

I got this delivered to me on my cell phone this morning via the Foneshow service. I listened in the car on the way back from getting bagels and was dying with laughter. Karl Pilkington is the perfect foil for Ricky Gervais.

The Podfather Part II Thanksgiving – Ricky Gervais, Karl Pilkington and Steve Merchant

Unfortunately this show is encoded in such a way that it plays weird in a flash player. So instead of clicking on the play button, you should click through and listen in a separate browser window. Be prepared to laugh hysterically.

Numair starts off this interesting post on Sean Parker with the following line:

First, let us settle the matter once and for all – the unthinkable has
happened, and we are in the midst of a second dotcom boom.

But as Howard points out in this post:

This market is so NOT 1999.

I think both statements are true. We are in the midst of a second dotcom boom. But it hasn’t entered the consciousness of the "man on the street".

But it sure has entered the consciousness of many entrepreneurs. They can’t think about anything else but starting companies and making a killing.

And it certainly has entered the consciousness of media executives who are falling all over each other trying to throw money at high flying startups before their competitors do.

And the latest fad is raising wads of cash to roll up internet media properties. I know of at least five groups that are doing it right now.

Watching this whole thing is making me grumpy.

I need to take a day off and spend it in the real world, like Lindsay did in today’s Wallstrip.

With all of these killer music apps, I really wish their was a way
to aggregate all my music attention into one place so I could store it,
view it, share it, and plug it into other web services like this:
http://www.allcrazystyle.com/. Posted by:

 

David Henderson

That is exactly what is missing. I need a music attention aggregator. Last.fm comes the closest to do that for me, but the explosion of cool music web services is leaving last.fm in the dust. I need something akin to Netvibes for music.

Sonos is back sponsoring the In Heavy Rotation section on the left sidebar.

Of all the ads that have run on my blog over the past three years, Sonos is my favorite. Not because I love their product (I do). But because they are doing something creative – sponsoring a widget on my blog sidebar.

I want to thank the sales team at Federated Media for getting Sonos back and I want to thank Sonos for their generosity (all this money goes to charity).

But most of all, I want to say that if you want the best way to turn your music library on your computer into the hub of your home music system, you should go out and buy a Sonos system. If I could take my payment for this sponsorship in Sonos systems, I would because I’d give them away to my friends and family as Christmas gifts and spread the Sonos love.

And to Sonos, here is a request. Figure out how to integrate Wolfgang’s Vault into your system. I’m listening to Elvis Costello’s 1978 show at Winterland right now on my laptop, but I’d rather have it on my home audio system so I could turn it WAY UP.

Wolfgang’s Vault (Bill Graham’s live concert archive) has been around for awhile in various forms, but now it’s online in all of its glory.

I’ve spent this morning listening to Led Zepplin at Fillmore West from April 27, 1969. Here’s the playlist:

There are plenty people who say that technology has taken the soul out of music. Maybe that’s true in certain ways. Album covers, liner notes, I miss them too.

But being able to listen to Led Zepplin from 37 years ago is a damn good thing. All in all, I’d argue (and have argued) that we are way better off now.

My friend and Flatiron backed entrepreneur Kurt Andersen is part of a small team of people who have created the Very Short List (aka VSL).

I’ve been getting the VSL email for a couple months and it’s a must read for me every day. Now there is a VSL website too which I actually prefer. They need to get an RSS feed up there for geeks like me who want everything in RSS. But other than that complaint/feedback, I really like VSL.

VSL is a really simple idea executed very well. Five days a week you get a single recommendation for books, movies, music, and other forms of popular culture.

I found out about Jóhann Jóhannsson (Sigur Ros meets Radiohead) from VSL. I found out about Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip (Borat 70 years ago) from VSL. I found out about The Interface podcast from VSL. I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.

Just go to VSL and sign up for the daily email. If you like culture (high and low), you’ll be glad you did.

There isn’t much to like about the Isaiah Thomas Knicks. After seeking someone to help me defray the cost of my season’s tickets on this blog earlier this year (to no avail), I let them go. And I have not felt badly about that decision, at least yet.

I particularly dislike Isaiah’s point guards, Starbury and Steve Francis. But we love Nate Robinson in our house. We call him Nate The Great and the game always gets more interesting when he’s on the court.

So when I read about this block he made on Yao Ming last night, I went right to YouTube and here it is for all of you to witness. Wow.

It’s time to close out my theoretical long CCU/short SIRI trade.

I proposed this trade almost two years ago, in December 2004.

Because of my investment in iBiquity, the creator of HD Radio, I’ve had a front row seat to watch the radio industry struggle with digital media. And struggle they have. But I felt back in December 2004 the same way I feel now. By using the Internet, podcasting, HD Radio, and a host of other digital technologies, radio can survive and even thrive.

So do a bunch of private equity investors who have agreed to pay $37.60 per share in a going private transaction for CCU. When that closes, my trade will close.

So how did I do? Not bad.

I suggested going long 15 shares of CCU at $33.92 and short 75 shares of SIRI at $6.90 so that the trade was zero cost out of pocket. If you close out the SIRI short at $4.05 (today’s price) and hold the CCU through to the closing of the buyout transaction at $37.60, the whole trade nets $268.95.

I believe the way you calculate the return on investment for a trade like this is look at the amount of capital you would have had to put up to cover the short position. I have no idea what that is but I assume its somewhere around 20% of the short position or roughly $100 according to a commenter it works out to a 24% annual rate of return.

So this trade nets a 24% rate of return over two years and a $268.95 profit. Not bad, but more importantly it shows that the prevailing wisdom in the winter of 2004 that satellite is the future of radio and terrestrial radio is dead was wrong. And it’s often quite profitable to bet on the prevailing wisdom being wrong.