Posts from February 2014

Video Of The Week: Yancey Strickler's Commencement Speech At McNally Smith

I came across this short (<15min) video this morning as I was wandering around YouTube. It’s a commencement speech that Kickstarter’s CEO Yancey Strickler gave at the McNally Smith College Of Music in St Paul Minnesota.

I really like the way Yancey frames the opportunities and challenges facing young artists as they head out into their adult lives and careers. It’s optimistic and hopeful. You can’t beat that.

#crowdfunding#marketplaces

Feature Friday: Kik Browser

On wednesday, our portfolio company Kik added something to their very popular mobile messenger – a browser. I guess a browser can hardly be called a feature. But inside a mobile messenger, a browswer can become a feature.

Now when you find a song in soundcloud that you want to send to a friend, you can pull it up in the kik browser and kik it your friend who can listen right inside kik, in the browser.

Here’s what I did this morning:

I opened soundcloud mobile in the kik browser

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I found the new Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr mixtape:

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And I sent it to Ted Livingston, Kik’s founder and CEO:

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Now Ted can listen to the mixtape right inside of Kik.

This works for anything that can be rendered in a mobile web page, an item on Etsy, a place on Foursquare, a stock quote on Google Finance, a search result on Duck Duck Go, etc, etc, etc

You can download Kik here and check it out.

I believe that the mobile environment lacks the native virality of the web. With a mobile messenger and the mobile web inside of it, we can get back to that place on mobile. So this is exciting and very promising to me.

#mobile

Lightweight Engagement Gestures

I was on vacation with my friend John and he asked me how I used the favorite button on Twitter. I told him it is a way to tell people that I’ve seen the tweet when I do not want to reply.

I use it in two primary ways. To signal that I saw and liked a tweet. And to signal that I saw a tweet to the person who sent it. The two are different only in that in the second case, I probably did not like the tweet but I still wanted to acknowledge it.

I really like super lightweight engagement gestures. I am bombarded by stuff coming at me all the time. So if I can acknoweledge something publicly without having to do much work, I get a huge amount of value from that.

Bumping on usv.com and upvoting on disqus are like that too. Because the identity of the bumber and the upvoter are on display publicly, they are an efficient way to signal that you saw it and liked it.

I am going to try to upvote more on disqus. As I reply less and less in the comments, I need to upvote more and more. I will make an effort to do that.

#Web/Tech#Weblogs

The Pre-Product Phase

One of my big weaknesses as an early stage investor is my eyes glaze over at wireframes, design sketches, photoshop screens, and prose that describes a product. Until I can get my hands on it and use it, I have an incredibly difficult time imagining what the thing is.

For that reason, I prefer working on projects that are designed in code as opposed to paper, photoshop, or some other tool. That’s a lot easier on the web and much harder on mobile, which is a bummer. When something is designed in code, it comes to life for me quickly and I can react to it, give feedback on it, and think about it, and consider investing in it.

I’ve pretty much given up investing in products that aren’t ready for public use. It has not really worked out for me. I really enjoy investing in a business where the product is out in the wild, getting used, and everything else has to be figured out. I am good at that. But I am not good at investing in the figuring out the product stage. My track record proves that conclusively.

I get a ton of requests (mutiple requests a day) to meet with entrepreneurs to give them feedback on their product. I also get emails with links to wireframes and sketches where entrepreneurs want feedback. I generally decline these requests because I know that my feedback will be poor. I lack the imagination to see where the entrepreneur is going with the product.

Everyone has their strenghts and weaknesses. My weakness is the pre-product phase. I thought I’d make that clear to everyone. It will save us all a lot of time and energy.

#VC & Technology

Dream It. Code It. Win It.

I attended a CS Teacher Meetup last night at USV. We talked about a lot of things but focused on the issue of getting more girls to code. It’s an important issue that I think we are starting to make good progress on.

Though not focused on girls per se, I heard about a neat coding challenge that is happening this Spring called Dream It. Code It. Win It.

This is a programming challenge (not a Hackathon) aimed at High School and College students. It is organized by the MIT Club of New York, MIT Enterprise Forum, and Trading Screen. The goal is to reward “the creative aspects of a computer science education.” College teams can win monetary prizes ($20k, $15k, and $10k). High School teams can win iPads.

The submission is a video where the team explains the problem they set out to solve, their solution, and a demonstration of a live working product that solves the problem.

Submissions can be made here and the juding panel will meet in NYC on April 30th from 5pm to 9pm to select the winners.

If you know a high school or college aged student who likes to code, please let them know about this contest.

#hacking education

CEO Bootcamp

My friend and former business partner Jerry Colonna has created CEO Bootcamp. It’s a four day retreat in the Colorado mountains with 19 other CEOs and a few facilitators, led by Jerry. The first CEO Bootcamp was last fall and you can see what attendees thought about it here. And here’s a blog post by Sooinn Lee about her experience last fall at CEO Bootcamp.

There are two aspects to this experience. There are the four days where attendees learn skills to help them manage the leadership role they are in, and there is the ongoing support that the group of CEOs provide each other after the retreat is over.

The CEO Bootcamp has some requirements. They are:

  • You’re the CEO of a tech start­up that has employees.
  • This is the first time you have been a CEO within a company of this scale.
  • You’ve logged immeasurable hours and have made tremendous sacrifices.
  • You’ve had success with your company. You realize there is more to this game than “success.”
  • You may be tired, but you must be vulnerable, curious and courageous.

If you fit these requirements and want to spend four days in early April in the Colorado mountains with a bunch of peer CEOs figuring out what it takes to be a successful leader, you can apply here.

#entrepreneurship#management

iOS8, Health Data, and Open Data

News is leaking out of Apple that iOS8’s primary feature will be health and fitness data. Rumors are that there will be a new app called Healthbook that will track a plethora of health and fitness data that iPhones and related devices (iWatch?) will be able to collect on the person carrying the devices.

This is interesting to me on a number of levels. We have been looking at this sector for a while and one of the things that has kept us (USV) from making investments in this space is the sense that all of this data capture is soon going to happen in the phone itself.

Once that happens, things can change pretty rapidly. The key will be APIs. And my big question is whether Apple will give its users an open API to send their health and fitness data to third parties they authorize.

I can see a button that says “auth with Healthbook” in my doctor’s office, my gym’s mobile app, my health insurers’s web app, and a host of other places.

So to my mind, the big question is not what Healthbook will look like but whether Apple will make it easy to get our data out of it. If they do, this will be a massive game changer for the quantified self, health, and wellness markets.

#hacking healthcare

Video Of The Week: The NYS DFS Bitcoin Hearings

I don’t know who is going to watch all of these panels. There were five in total. I am not sure who is going to watch this video of our panel in its entirety. However, there are a number of fascinating issues raised in this discussion. From the role of regulation in the innovation economy, to the (I think false) choice between stopping bad actors and freedom to innovate, to the way a new technology comes to market. If you have two hours this weekend, you might want to put this on your TV and let it roll.

We were panel number one. I have watched parts of all five panels. I have included links to all of them below.

Here is the second panel (alternative virtual currencies, including the developer of Litecoin).

Here is the third panel (law enforcement)

Here is the fourth panel (entrepreneurs)

Here is the fifth panel (academics)

Reactions to these hearings have been all over the map. William sent me this video reaction from Andreas Antonopoulos which is worth watching if you still have time after (or instead of) watching eight hours of testimony.

#hacking finance