Posts from October 2007

  GPhone by Google 
  Originally uploaded by Stella Lui.

I don’t recall who said this to me recently, but someone told me that internal debates are raging inside Google about the wisdom of getting into the hardware business with the gPhone.

That makes sense to me. Google is barely in the software business. Instead they mostly deliver services via the web and increasingly mobile devices.

But their web services are not that useful today on mobile devices. For example the experience I have using microsoft’s outlook products on my blackberry is still vastly superior to the experience you get running gmail and gcal on any mobile device that I have seen. It’s true that Apple’s iPhone does a terrific job with gmaps and that is clearly an early look at how great web apps will be when they are delivered on a mobile device designed specifically for them.

So it makes sense that Google wants to build a gPhone. When they do, I’ll probably switch from microsoft exchange/office to gmail and gcal. I’ve been wanting to for a long time.

But how does Google deal with the big changes to their business model that will come from being in the hardware business? How do they deal with the fact that they will now compete with Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Apple, and a host of other companies who have been making and marketing hardware for a long time?

I would love to see Google release the gPhone, market it heavily, deliver a great device, and then put the operating system software and hardware reference design out into the marketplace in a way that they continue to control the base platform but anyone can build and market a gPhone.

That way, they get the thing they want most, a mobile platform built specifically to run Google web apps, and get out of the hardware business, and build a bunch of strategic relationships with hardware companies who will work hard to promote their services.

I don’t know anything about Google’s plans for the gPhone. Although this article from engadget suggests that the gPhone is coming soon and that it may well be made and marketed by others.

It will be interesting to watch how this develops.

I got a comment on one of my earlier posts on this topic wondering if the challenge was still on (and the quest for lunch with Jerry Yang). The anwer is yes, absolutely, the challenge runs until the end of the month.

So if you still want to get in on this, click here and join the 81 people who have already given via this blog.

That’s what I do all day. Every day. Dozens of times a day. I try to reply to every email from every entrepreneur who sends us an investment opportunity. I don’t achieve that goal and sometimes I don’t even get close.

But at least half the time, probably 2/3 of the time, I just reply with a no. And I try to explain in each and every one why the answer is no. Because email is time consuming, the explanation is often one or two lines. Something like "it doesn’t fit into our investment strategy" or "we don’t invest in content businesses" or "it’s too early state" or "it’s too late stage". I realize that these reasons are barely useful. But at least it’s better than "no thanks".

If we take a meeting, then the need to explain goes up. I took a call yesterday from one of my oldest friends in the business. He’d spent a bunch of time in the past month looking at a deal I sent him. He and his partners decided not to invest. He spent ten minutes explaining why. It was incredibly helpful to me. I then asked him to call the person who runs the company and do the same thing. Frankly, it’s a lot to ask. He’s going to repeat himself and the person on the receiving end may not appreciate the message. It’s hard work saying no correctly.

But he’ll do it. And he’ll do it well.

Saying no correctly is really important in the venture capital business. Saying it quickly on things you are not going to do is the first and most important thing. But saying no on the things you’ve spent real time on is equally important. And the hardest part is telling the truth.

What do you say if the reason you don’t want to invest is you don’t have confidence in the person running the company (the person you are saying no to in most cases)? Do you tell them that? Or do you make up some other reason?

I’ve tried every way to say no and my belief is the truth, no holds barred, is the best approach. If you don’t think the entrepreneur can run the business, tell them that. If you think the market is too small, tell them that. If you think the competition is too tough, tell them that. Many entrepreneurs will take a "shoot the messenger" approach and be annoyed or upset with you. But that is vastly preferable to blowing someone off with a "my partners weren’t into it" or "we just couldn’t get there".

Saying no is never easy, but it’s part of what we do in the venture business. So you might as well figure out how to do it right.

  Thundercrack My Baby’s Back 
  Originally uploaded by fredwilson.

I took 3 of the Four Fellas to see Springsteen at MSG last night. The Four Fellas are a band made up of 11 year olds who have been playing together for 3 1/2 years.

They got to see a band that’s been playing together for 35 years, the E-Street Band, fronted by the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. The E-Street band is certainly one of the great american rock and roll bands (along with Jackson’s beloved Heartbreakers).

The show was classic Bruce, it got better and better, and it seemed like he didn’t really want to quit. The encores were the highlight  and a super long version of Thundercrack was tops of the night for me. Before the song Bruce talked about playing it in front of 150 people on a double bill with the Wailers at Max’s Kansas City. I sure wish the Four Fellas could have seen that. I wish I could of.

Thundercrack – Bruce Springsteen Live In Philly, 10-6-07

Thanks to Ick Music for the mp3

There’s a woman who reads this blog regularly who I went to high school with 30 years ago. We were two of the "smart kids" in our grade. We took the same classes and had a pretty similar experience in high school (it sucked). Both of us went on to really great schools, blossomed, and have gone on to leave fulfilling adult lives.

She emailed me yesterday about a small problem she had with my Donors Choose Bloggers Challenge (reminder, I still need some help getting to $25k). We traded a few emails and in one of them she said:

That’s one of the great things (or maybe not) about blogging.  I haven’t
seen you in almost 30 years, but I am fairly up to date on your business
and family etc…  Of course, you know nothing about mine so it’s pretty
one sided.

It’s true. She knows a ton about what I’ve been up to and I don’t anything about what she’s been up to. I asked her if she blogged. She doesn’t and then sent me a two paragraph email update which I read with interest. Her point was she’s got nothing to blog about. That’s for her to decide, but I am not so sure.

I read blogs all the time from people who leavehave lives that many would say are not worthy of blogging about. They are some of the best blogs I read. It’s not so much about what you do, it’s about what you think and how you share those thoughts with everyone else.

But until everyone has a blog, this medium is still going to be pretty one way (me talking to you). That’s why I love comments so much. I want every commenter in the entire blog world to have a single page where all of their comments are captured. Then they’ll all have a blog that I can subscribe to. And it won’t be one way any more.

I woke up this morning and realized that I am doing about five full time jobs this week;

1) Managing Partner of Union Square Ventures. Hopefully you know what I do in this job.

2) Managing Partner of Flatiron Partners. Yes, Flatiron is still active and we have five really good companies in the portfolio.

3) Blogger – Like it or not, this blog could be easily be a full time job. It’s a full time job making sure it isn’t.

4) Community Activist – I’ve been sucked into the Pier 40 debate and not a day goes by when I don’t do something meaningful on this project. Yesterday I got to spend an entirely enjoyable hour with former NYC Parks Commissioner Henry Stern. Fortunately I have a Parks Name (woodrow) and that was my calling card.

5) Parent – The Gotham Gal is gone this week so I am doing double duty as mom and dad. I am loving it. Last night I got home, made dinner, cleaned up, helped the kids with their homework, watched a little TV with Josh, and took several work related phone calls.

My big problem in life is I can’t say no to good causes and good ideas. My partner in Flatiron, Jerry Colonna, says I need a life coach. Maybe so, but I sure am enjoying wearing so many hats this week.

I credit  Jeff Pulver for introducing me to this term – Social Media Living Room. I love it.

For my kids, Facebook is their social media living room. It’s all they need.

But for me and my friends like Jeff, our social media living rooms are more complicated. Maybe that’s what happens when you become an adult. What worked in your bedroom as a teenager doesn’t work in your living room as an adult. You need more stuff.

In my social media living room, I have this blog and about a hundred others, I have techmeme, I have twitter, I have hypemachine and last.fm, I have flickr and delicious. Each and every day it seems I add another piece of furniture to my social media living room. And some of them are working together.

Today I saw on Twitter my friend Mark (aka mediaeater) favoriting songs in the new hypemachine and went to hypemachine and listened to his favorites playlist. Then I saw a friend join dopplr and visited their page and saw that I could invite my twitter friends to dopplr and did just that.

Stitching together our social media living rooms is not only necessary, it’s fun. And when your social media living room is filled with your friends, it’s almost as good as when they are in your real living room.

From Seth Godin today comes the story of an employee at Zappos doing an exceptional thing.

I am reminded of a scene in Danny Meyer’s book Setting The Table which I blogged about back in January. A woman had left something important at her home and realized it when she got to the restaurant. The hostess told her to relax, enjoy the meal, and she’d send a car to get the thing she left. I know I am not getting the story entirely right, but by desert, the woman had the thing she had left at home. Danny’s book is full of stories like this. And that’s why he is among the most successful restaurant owners of his generation.

And in a funny coincidence, my post about Danny last January includes a cool story about a gift of Yoyodyne stock. Which of course was Seth Godin’s first Internet company, where I had the pleasure of being an investor.

Seth and Danny are both special people who inspire others to be exceptional in their every day lives. I feel fortunate to know both of them.

It got launched last night. So go check it out and let me know what you think.

I like the new interface even though there are less links above the fold. It’s much more pleasing to the eye.

But there are two killer features that make Hype Machine 2.0 a much improved service.

1) The "spy list" is a great new feature. I generally listen to popular and latest tracks. But spy gives me great results. I am not sure how that list gets generated but it’s good.

2) Favoriting is actually bookmarking. It builds a favorite list that you can listen to just like any other Hype Machine page. Here’s my favorite list. I hope you like it as much as I do.

The other cool thing about favoriting is if you give your twitter name, the hype machine will auto twitter the fact that you just favorited a song with a link to that song on Hype Machine.

I wrote a post recently saying that I don’t like favoriting music. But this is different. This is really bookmarking. It does something really useful. As Anthony explained in an email to me the other day:

I feel I don’t do it [favoriting] because on some level there is not enough incentive to do it.  What’s the value of a 5 star rating in itunes or a loved artist in last.fm? What can you do with the stuff you favorited? On the flipside, there is plenty more incentive to favorite something in delicious.

We are making HM’s loved feature to work more like a bookmark of something you liked in the HM’s constant stream of content so it’s really easy to revisit things that caught your attention. Also creating it as commitment-free as possible (you can do it without an account and it’s really easy to ‘unlove’ something).

We’ve observed over the years that little things like getting the incentives right in a social system make all the difference in the world. Anthony’s focusing on the right things and that’s why the new Hype Machine rocks.