Posts from VC & Technology

Somehow I found myself copied on four or five big email group discussions regarding the outcome of the election.

As it always happens, people feel compelled to "reply to all" and then they generate huge amounts of spam in my mailbox.

I easily have 100 "spam" emails this week from this stuff, probably twice that.

I don’t want to be a jerk and reply to all asking to be removed from the discussion.

So I just hit the delete key, again, and again.

I’ve moved on.  I don’t want to participate in group therapy.

But I know that its important to a lot of people to do that.

I just wish they’d find a more appropirate way to do this.  How about a blog, or a wiki, or something more appropriate?  It just proves that blogs and wikis are not mainstream and email is.

About a week ago, I posted that I think CEO blogs are a great idea.

Today, I was running through the various blogs I read, catching up on things, and came across this post by Steve Goldstein about the departure of Alacra’s VP of Sales, Bob Delaney.  This wasn’t news to me, but the way Steve communicated this was great.

Bob’s a great guy and was a big part of why Alacra has become such a great company.  He’s moving on to bigger and better things.

Steve used his blog to get the word out and communicate to the broader stakeholder base of his company.

It’s a classy move and reflects well on Steve, Bob, and Alacra.  A great use of a CEO blog.

Well done Steve.

TypePad released a new posting interface sometime in the past 24 hours.  I saw it for the firs time this morning.

Before I tell you how great it is – a digression.  Web-based software and services is a superior way to deliver technology.  TypePad built something new and all I need to get the benefit of it is to log in the way I always do and there it is.  No downloading, no installing, no configuration, no migration.  That’s powerful.

OK, back to TypePad.  The new interface is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).  That is a huge improvement.  When I insert an image, I get to see it right in the posting screen.  It now supports bullets, numbering, indentation, and color.

And it’s got a spell checker!  Nice for us bad typists and bad spellers.

The one thing that’s gone is the quotation format.  I liked that.  I am going to send them an email asking to bring that back.

There’s also an HTML editor which will come in handy as well.

All in all, this is a Big Improvement.  Well done TypePad.

UPDATE:  Michael Sippey, VP Product at TypePad, commented on this post regarding "quotation".  He said:

Just to let you know, the new UI does support blockquote; we’ve adopted the Office-style icons for indent and outdent text. The "increase indent" button will insert a blockquote tag, and the "decrease indent" tag will remove the blockquote tag. The feature also supports nested blockquotes, so that you can quote within quotes, if need be.

I used "increase ident" to put that quote in here.  My recollection (which could well be wrong) was that the indentation used to be on both the right and the left.  This new way is just fine too.

Remember when we used to focus on Netscape vs Internet Explorer market share?  Back in the mid-90s, that was a big deal.  Slowly, but surely, Microsoft took the market away from Netscape.  That led to the anti-trust suits which ended up giving Microsoft a wrist slap.

Most of us in the technology business felt that the market would, in the end, have a more powerful impact on Microsoft than legal efforts.  And that’s turning out to be true, driven by open source.

Linux is having an impact on Windows market share.

And Firefox is starting to accumulate some real browser market share.

Here’s a chart from Technology Futurist, a great site on technology and trends.  It shows the share of browsers that visit his site.

Clearly, Technology Futurist’s readers are more techy and more likely to use Firefox than the average user, but this is a trend.  Microsoft’s got competition in the browser market again.

If you want to download Firefox, you can get it for free here.

I woke up this morning energized. I’ve spent a fair amount of money, time, emotional energy, and blog real estate on this election. It’s over and my guy lost. That’s the way it goes. I am moving on.

There’s some great stuff going on at work which I hope to be able to blog about soon.

The shape of this blog will change. Less politics. More venture and technology. Maybe more music. Maybe more of something else too. Who knows?

I don’t plan to stop talking about my politics, but I know I’ll have less to say for now.

It will be interesting to see how these changes affect my traffic.

Matt Blumberg blogged this weekend about the joys of becoming a Vonage customer.

My friend and VOIP pioneer Tom Evslin has been saying for years that VOIP will be ubiquitous by 2010. I think he is right about that, but possibly it will be even sooner.

And I love the Greg Sands quote, “I don’t know who is going to win this war…but I certainly know who’s going to lose it.”

I made the mistake of posting a Ralph Nader quote last week and now my blog is full of Ralph Nader ads.

This bothers me, just like the “use the OTC market to raise venture capital” ads that sometimes run on my blog. Google ought to offer the publisher the ability to simply select any ads they don’t like and take them out of rotation on their site.

I feel like clicking the hell out of these Nader ads so that Ralph’s campaign pays me a lot of money.

At the beginning of September I asked for advice on which phone/PDA combo I should get.

I’d like to thank everyone who gave me advice. I got fifteen responses in the comments section and another ten or so via email. That was very helpful.

Many wanted to know where I came out. I took my time making the decision and came close to going with Treo.

But in the end I stayed with Blackberry because they fixed the main thing I didn’t like about their PDA phones. They finally came out with a phone that feels like a phone.

I got my Blackberry 7100t this weekend and I love it already. The new keypad is great. I have always been a Tmobile user so that wasn’t an issue with me. I like the IM clients (both AOL and Yahoo). And the web browser is fine. But the best thing is it works perfectly with our Blackberry Exchange Server and that’s what I’ve always loved about Blackberry. It just does email better.

An interesting and predictable thing is happening in the technology startup business these days.

From 1997 through the end of 2000, we had a situation where every company struggled to hire and retain its best employees. But we also had a huge number of people deciding they wanted to get into the high tech startup business so there was always a source of new talent. Developers and engineers were often the most difficult hires because there was a limited ability to go outside the tech industry to find them.

From 2001 through the end of 2003, we had a radically different situation. Jobs were hard to find in the technology startup business, and those who had good jobs in stable technology companies were not likely to leave them. Many of the people who flooded into the technology startup business in the 1999/2000 period left it just as quickly.

This year its starting to feel more like the 1997 to 2000 period again. We are seeing turnover of people in our portfolio companies again. Talented employees are leaving for new opportunities elsewhere.

But I don’t think this is entirely a bad thing. Sure a stable work force is critical for every company, but some new blood is also a good thing. I like to say that nobody is irreplaceable. If they are, you don’t have a company, you’ve got rock star.

The excitement of working for a young high growth company is back in vogue and we are recruiting new people into the tech industry again from more established industries and bigger companies. That is sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. This “new blood” brings skills, relationships, and new ways of looking at things. But they also bring bad habits like needing lots of resources to get anything done, big expense accounts, and bureaucracy. I think companies need to “tread carefully” when hiring out of bigger companies.

The other issue that is coming into play for many companies is the issue of hiring from within versus recruiting from outside. Many small high growth companies just don’t have a big enough work force to be able to hire from within as a matter of practice. But it’s always a good idea to look inside the company for someone who can fill a role before going outside. It creates a stronger culture and keeps talented people motivated and energized.

The CEOs who survived the downturn with their companies intact proved that they were tenacious, creative, hard nosed, and financially savvy. Now they are waking up to find out that the game has changed. They have to start focusing on the people side of the business a lot more. Hiring, managing, and retaining the talent is back at the top of the priority list.