Posts from August 2008

Longtime readers of this blog know that I have been an investor and board member of Return Path since 2000.

Return Path is the market leader in email reputation and deliverability. Simply put, they help the right mail get through filters and help ISPs make sure bad mail doesn’t get through. They do this by measuring the reputation of commercial mail senders all over the world. If you send mail, you can check your SenderScore reputation here. You might recall a recent post I did about how Return Path helped Twitter get their SenderScore way up which means their mail doesn’t get stuck in spam filters anymore.

Return Path’s primary competitor in email reputation and deliverability is a company called Habeas. Return Path announced today that they have acquired Habeas and the two companies are now one. As Matt Blumberg, Return Path’s CEO, explains in a blog post, this is a business about scale:

For everyone we work with, this deal means we have even more scale.
More scale is a good thing. It means we can invest more in our future
in everything from technical infrastructure, to product innovation, to
globalization, to employee development. It’s easy to be great when
you’re a 25 person company. It’s actually quite challenging when you’re
a 50-100 person company. It becomes easier again, though in different
ways, when you are a 200 person company with more resources.

Email continues to be frought with problems decades after it was invented. I am hoping that the new Return Path can continue to help all of us make email work better.

I am taking my new 3g iphone for a spin at the gym this morning. This will be a brief post because I can’t type on this thing for the life of me

There are some nice things about this phone I like the twinkle twitted client,I like the geoloxation features,I like that I have all my smartplaylists available to
I listen to,and I love the mobile browser

The typepad app is ok I like that it’s easy to take or add a photo from your library to your post

But until/if I can learn to type on this thing at anywhere near the speed I can type on my blackberry,it’s primary use will be laser saber fights with my son

“ Emerging technologies that threaten to destroy the current paradigm can have precisely the opposite effect. Remember when VCRs and then DVDs were going to lay waste to the movie industry and ended up saving it instead? The Web leaks of entertainment that NBC bought and paid for served as a kind of trailer for the real thing.                         —Fred Wilson Dot VC

This was a reblog from my tumblog using Zemanta. Very cool.
 

I was a little hesitant about this but I’ve come around to thinking it’s a good thing. A longtime reader of this blog, Jeremy Epstein, is putting together a meetup in DC for people who read this blog (I am sure you are welcome even if you don’t read it).

Jeremy describes it this way:

You’re about community. You’re about your readers. I offered this up and want to meet other folks who read your blog in my area. We share interests and it would be fun.

I can’t argue with that. So here are the details:

Date: Wed. August 13th
Time: 7pm-9 pm
Location:
MienYu
3125 M Street NW
Washington, DC 20007
Phone: 202.333.6122

You can RSVP here

I hope someone takes some pictures and posts them to flickr (or elsewhere) with the avc tag so I can reblog them here.

Many readers of this blog know that I am a huge fan of "placeblogging" or "hyperlocal". I believe that the future of community newspapers will be found on the web where residents will blog about local issues that matter to them and someone will aggregate it up in a way that makes it easy for the average citizen to keep track of what’s going on.

The New York Times has a story today on exactly that happening in various suburbs around the NY Metro area. I sent the link to the team at outside.in, our portfolio company that provides tools and services for placebloggers and local newspapers that want to leverage placeblogging, and a consumer facing service for people to track their neighborhoods.

Turns out they had already read the story and blogged about it on the outside.in blog. Mark Josephson, outside.in’s CEO, writes:

This is where placebloggers come in.  They can, and do, cover news
and info at the neighborhood level.  The ease of the publishing
platform (blogs) and the acceleration of monetization via networks and
targeted ad sales are making this a much more viable way to spend time
(as the NYT describes).

We track thousands of these sites and are witnessing first-hand how successful they are and how fast this segment is growing.

Hyperlocal/placeblogging is a tough nut to crack but it’s such a worthwhile one because when it is cracked, a whole new way of covering a community will result. The community will cover itself.

South By Southwest (SXSW) is the one conference I consistently hear great things about. I have never been because it comes at a particularly difficult time of the year for me, right as our family is getting ready to go on our kid’s spring break. I keep telling myself that I’ll go, but I just haven’t been able to make it work with my calendar.

The great thing about SXSW is its really three conferences back to back, it starts with interactive (tech), then film, and ends with music. If that’s not a great set of things to talk about, I don’t know what is.

Another great thing about SXSW is that you get to vote for the panels that they end up doing. Voting has started and you can place your votes here. They’ll close the voting on Aug 29th, so don’t wait, go vote now.

If you need some inspiration, here are some suggestions that I voted for:

Strong Personal Online Brands: How to Develop and Maintain – Gary Vaynerchuk

Blurry Networks: Friends, Contacts, Followers and Professional Me – Charlie O’Donnell

Think Globally, Post Locally: The Emerging Power of Local Voice – Chris Tolles

I particularly recommend Charlie’s panel. He’s the best internet networker I know (close second is Howard Lindzon). I’ve learned a lot from Charlie and you can too.

On June 17th, I left my office, got on the A train, and headed to JFK to grab a flight to SFO. Since that day almost two months ago, I have spent six nights in my home in NYC. And it’s not over yet. Between now and labor day, I think I’ll spend another six nights in my home in NYC.

Between June 17th and Labor Day, I will have been to 14 different locations, visited London three times, San Francisco twice, and taken countless flights and trains.

There are some of you out there for whom this is normal. Certainly sales and business development people, investment bankers, consultants, and others live this kind of work life and it’s normal to them. And there are people like Joi and Esther who live on the road and I have no idea how they do it.

Traveling is not normal for me. Back in the late 90s, I never traveled. The joke was that I’d look at a deal if it was between 34th street and Canal street, between 1st Avenue and 10th Avenue.

I don’t like to travel. I don’t like flying, I don’t like staying in hotels, I don’t like jet lag, I don’t like missing my exercise routine, I don’t like waking up and not knowing where I am. I am a creature of habit and feel like I am at my best when I can lock into a routine.

But gradually over the past couple years, I’ve embraced travel and have come to terms with it. It really started with the work I did personally in the aftermath of the bubble to get a handle on things. I learned to deal with stuff I didn’t want to do, starting with air travel. I still don’t like to fly small planes, but I can get on a commercial jet without any apprehension. I don’t like it when the plane bumps around, but I’ve learned how to chill out and deal with it.

The big-time travel that our family has been doing since our youngest was in second grade (2002) has also been a big part of my about face on traveling. We’ve been all over the world and we’ve had a blast. I want to do more of it, not less. I want to see as much of the world I can see, experience different cultures, languages, tastes, and smells.

And then there’s our business. When we started Union Square Ventures, Brad and I were not focused on location. We wanted to invest in the best web applications and services we could find. But we knew the NYC market cold and had a reputation there. We knew we could win deals and make a name for ourselves quickly in NYC. And that’s what we did.

A couple years ago, we started looking outside of NYC and we’ve now made four investments in San Francisco and are looking to make more. We’ve made one investment in London and are open to making more. You can’t invest in companies if you aren’t willing to spend face time with them.  So that means travel and the more companies we invest in outside of NYC, the more I’ll travel.

Honestly, I am torn about it. I still hate to be away from home. This summer has taken a toll on me. I am out of shape. I’ve hurt my shoulder and it’s not getting better. I’ve lost weight. I have bags under my eyes and people tell me I look tired all the time. I am tired a lot of the time.

But I am also energized. In June, I was a bit burnt out on the web. I wanted to be inspired. This summer has inspired me in a bunch of ways. We’ve closed a bunch of new investments while I’ve been away that are taking us in marginally in some new directions. Our firm runs like a well-oiled machine when I am away. I can focus more on other things. I have met literally hundreds of entrepreneurs in Europe who are bucking the odds and doing it the hard way, staying at home and showing that you don’t need to be in silicon valley to change the world. And last but not least, I’ve got a brand new blog and a new domain.

I’ve also been able to have my family with me for much of this travel, particularly in Europe. As my kids get older and start fending for themselves, I hope the Gotham Gal will do more traveling with me. Travel sucks, but it sucks less when you are with your family.

So I’ve become a traveling man. I guess I’ll have to start really using dopplr.

Image via Wikipedia

I had the opportunity to speak to a group of entrepreneurs in Leeds yesterday evening. It was a friday night in August (the summertime blues), but the turnout was excellent and I totally enjoyed the evening.

On the way down on the train from Edinburgh to Leeds, I started to put together a deck to anchor my talk. But I stopped myself and decided to select six topics to riff on (like the six amazing tracks on the original vinyl version of Live At Leeds).

But I had a tough time on the train figuring out what the six topics would be. So I did something new (for me) that worked out really well. I opened the 1:20 talk with about ten minutes on me and our firm. Then I opened up Microsoft Word on the big screen and went around the room and asked each person to suggest one topic for me to talk to. Each person had the option to pick a new topic, add a vote for an existing topic, or pass. I put each and every one of them up on the big screen. I wish I would have saved that word document because it’s an interesting collection of the issues facing entrepreneurs these days. But from memory, here are the six topics that got the most votes:

1) How do you evaluate a new investment opportunity?
2) What is going on with the US economy and how will it impact the global economy?
3) What do you make of technology platforms and software as a service business models?
4) How do you evaluate management teams before and after you invest in them?
5) What’s next for the web and web-based businesses?
6) What are the limits of advertising based business models and are they sustainable?

That’s from memory. If anyone has a better recollection of the topics we chose last night, please leave them in the comments and I’ll update this post.

There is clearly a great deal of unease in the entrepreneur community about the economy and the reliance on advertising based business models. I got a distinct sense that everyone is looking for other areas and business models for inspiration.

This talk was the finale of my summer ’08 tour of web entrepreneurship in europe. It further reinforced my view that web/tech entrepreneurship is a global phenomenon these days and that being in the US (or Silicon Valley) is no longer the huge advantage it once was. Entrepreneurs all over the world are on top of the latest technologies, companies, and business models. They see where all of this is going as clearly as we do in the states. They face challenges for sure like capital availability, awareness, marketing, travel distances, etc that entrepreneurs in the US don’t face as much. But I expect to see more and more innovation and cutting edge technology coming from outside the US in the coming years. I hope some of it comes from Northern England because I really enjoyed the people I met last night.

I’d like to thank Carl and Imran for their persistence in getting me to come to Leeds and their help in arranging the evening (and the Sheffield Wednesday match today!)

LINKS:

Guy Dickinson’s notes from the talk

Greg Yardley, founder/CEO of our portfolio company Pinch Media tells the following story about graduating from college and facing the career question:

When I finished school, I had a MA in Russian history and absolutely no idea what to do with myself – I started working as a customer support rep at an Internet startup because they were the first ones to offer me a job.  (If the startup was a week later with the job offer, I’d probably be a 911 emergency operator today.  Sometimes life can lead you to unexpected places.)  I was surprised to stumble across a field that I loved – soon I became a product manager, and now I’m the co-founder of a company.  You never know – maybe there’s a career here for you that you’ve never considered.

And so he’s going back to his roots to get some help. Greg’s looking to hire a couple of NYC-based college students who can spend up to 20 hours a week at Pinch Media. Here’s the details:

Pinch Media is a small, early-stage startup working on tools for iPhone application developers.  Right now it’s just me and a team of developers – the developers do the programming, and I do everything else.  I can’t do everything I’d like to do right now, so I’m looking for some help.  The work will involve pretty much everything besides programming – you’ll be doing some administrative tasks, some marketing work, some basic product & project management, some customer support, some research – you name it, you’ll have an opportunity to do it.

I’m looking for one or two interns to work around twenty hours a week each.  Our offices are at 20th & Broadway, in the middle of the Flatiron District.  The hours are relatively flexible and can be structured around a college schedule.  These are paid positions, although the pay is low – we’re a capital-efficient company, and trying to do a lot with a little.  Relevant experience is always appreciated, but isn’t strictly necessary for this job – the primary things I’m looking for are raw intelligence, enthusiasm, strong communications skills, and the ability to learn quickly. 

We’re happy to consider everybody, but for personal reasons I’d especially like to talk to students who’ve never considered working at a dot-com, because they believed their academic backgrounds weren’t suitable. 

After your internship with Pinch Media, you’ll know what it’s like to work at an early-stage start-up, you’ll have relevant experience in a variety of functional roles, and you’ll be well-positioned for a full-time, entry-level role in the Internet industry.  (You’ll also have developed a number of strong connections, with ourselves and with our investors, which come in handy when looking for that first position.)  If you’re interested, send your resume and a personal note to [email protected].