February 2012
5 posts
2 tags
Imagining Movies in a World Without Windows
One of the great sacred cows of the movie business has been the theatrical release window. First a movie is only in theatrical release. Then there may be a period where it is only on DVD. And finally it may be everywhere including various online options. Over the years the theatrical release window has compressed as described for instance in this 2009 Wharton piece. But it still exists and I...
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Tech Tuesday: Routing and TCP/IP
We are continuing along with the web request cycle. Last week we took a look at the HTTP protocol. There I already mentioned that HTTP requests and responses travel over a TCP/IP connection. Today we will dive a bit deeper into TCP/IP. This is technically not really necessary for understanding the request cycle because these lower levels of the network are completely abstracted away when you...
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Learning to Love Sales
I started out in business selling development services. OK, so that’s hugely glorified. I was a teenager desperate to get my driver’s license in Germany where that is a costly process (lots of mandatory lessons). So I figured out how to make money programming custom applications for people, including a driving school. Ever since then I have had a love/hate relationship with sales.
...
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Facebook's Valuation
I was going to write a post about Facebook’s valuation, but Bill Gurley has done such an excellent job, that the better idea is to point at his post explaining “Why Facebook Clearly Belongs in the 10x Revenue Club.” There is one other important point to consider in thinking about Internet company valuations in the current economic environment: low interest rates. Companies that...
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The Challenge: A Decentralized Rights Registry
Since my post last Friday about alternatives to SOPA/PIPA, I have started to talk to a bunch of people about the idea of a decentralized content registry. Here are some thoughts and questions that I have been kicking around since then.
A decentralized system could offer a new revenue stream for existing registrars and certificate authorities who are already at least partially equipped to deal...
January 2012
17 posts
3 tags
Tech Tuesday: HTTP
Today we are continuing on with the web request cycle. After the browser has parsed the URL and obtained the IP address of the server via DNS, the browser now has to communicate with the server. That is done using the so-called Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP for short. The beginnings of HTTP go back to the early 1990s when Tim Berners-Lee first devised it drawing inspiration from Ted Nelson,...
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ReRAM: An Exciting Hardware Innovation
In my Tech Tuesday posts I have covered main memory and storage (by the way, coming up tomorrow: HTTP). If you have read those or otherwise follow hardware, then you will find this short piece from BBC Technology News on a new technology known as ReRAM quite interesting. Essentially, ReRAM holds the promise of providing non-volatile storage at the speed of memory.
That would provide a major...
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Thinking About Alternatives to SOPA/PIPA
With SOPA and PIPA shelved at least for the moment, it is time to start thinking about alternatives. It would be a shame if we limited our collective thinking here to slightly different versions of those bills instead of exploring what a different approach to copyright could be that doesn’t try to fight the characteristics of the Internet but rather embraces them, providing value for rights...
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Apple Is Slow Boiling Developers
How do you boil a frog? Slowly. Apparently the same is true for endusers and even software developers. That at least is what Apple seems to believe. And while this has been debunked for frogs (they do jump out as the water gets too warm), it’s not clear that the same is true for humans. We seem all too willing to trade off having a shiny device for accepting ever more restrictions on...
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Supermodularity And Service Bundling
This will be a bit of a wonky and short post with a longer and less technical one to follow some time soon. Google has just announced a coming update to their privacy policy which will essentially make it possible for Google to integrate all the information it has about a user across its many different services. This comes at the same time as the revelation that Larry Page apparently explicitly...
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Tech Tuesday: DNS
Today we are continuing with the web cycle that I outlined two weeks ago. After a URL has been parsed in Step 1, the browser needs to determine the IP address for the domain as Step 2. Reprising the previous example, let’s consider the domain name dailylit.com. How does the browser determine that in order to retrieve information from this domain it should access a server at IP address...
Why Software As A Service (A Personal Reminder)
I am in the process of migrating a bunch of stuff off an ancient server which has been up continuously for 5 years and is being sunset (the hardware is tired and RedHat is ending support for RHEL4). The migration process has been a potent reminder as to the many hidden costs of installed software. For instance, at the time that the old machine was set up I used Subversion for version control and...
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Some Quick Observations on MegaUpload
Yesterday an international police operation resulted in the shutdown of MegaUpload and the arrest of at least four MegaUpload employees in Auckland, New Zealand. This action resulted in a large scale DDoS attack by the group known as Anonymous on web sites including the MPAA, RIAA, DoJ and even the White House. While I don’t have time today for a full scale analysis here are some salient...
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The Day the Internet Stood Still
Yesterday (Wednesday, January 18), has a good chance as being remembered as the day that the Internet first truly showed its political clout in the US. So far we have largely pointed at events abroad when discussing the Internet’s potential to shift power. Web sites and services large and small (including Continuations) either forcefully alerted their users to the problems with SOPA/PIPA...
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Tech Tuesday: Anatomy of a URL
Last week’s overview of “How the Web Works” introduced the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) as the fundamental way things are addressed on the web. Before we pick apart some actual URLs, it is worth looking at the name itself. The promise behind “Uniform” is that this addressing scheme can be used across all kinds of resources and that explains why URLs are so...
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Covestor: Getting the Message Out!
Our portfolio company Covestor today rolled out a tremendous overhaul of their web presence. The goal was to dramatically simplify Covestor’s message to make it easier for that message to spread and to improve conversion. The team has done an amazing job with a process that used extensive quantitative and qualitative research into consumer reactions to inform the redesign. While...
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Moving Back to New York City and Homeschooling
In the middle of 2010 we started to seriously consider moving back to New York City. At the time one of the considerations was that it would be possible to experiment with homeschooling the kids. I am excited to report that we are doing both. We have a place in Chelsea that is a short walk from the Union Square Ventures office and almost as importantly around the corner from Murray’s...
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Presenting Option Grants to Boards
One of the nearly routine items at startup board meetings is the discussion and ratification of option grants for new employees and possibly refresh grants for existing employees. Too often unfortunately this information is presented to the board in a way that requires way more time than should be necessary because critical pieces are missing.
Here is what you should always include as a bare...
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Google Going All In
Last July I had predicted that Google would go all in by bundling Google+ aggressively with search and that is exactly what was just announced yesterday with Search, plus Your World. The “plus Your World” part right now refers “your world on Google” as only Google+ profiles, posts and shared images are included and not content from Twitter, Facebook or others. John...
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Tech Tuesday: How The Web Works (Overview)
As promised at the end of last year’s Tech Tuesday, we are starting this year with a cycle on how the web works. Just as a reminder, Tech Tuesday’s aim is to require no previous knowledge other than what has been covered before. So this overview may be trivial for some readers but I wanted to make sure to bring everyone along.
Let’s assume you have fired up your favorite web...
The Internet Is a Human Right
At first, I was surprised to see a New York Times OpEd by Vint Cerf with the title “Internet Access Is Not a Human Right.” But once I started to read I began to understand the point that Cerf was trying to make. It comes out clearest in the sentence “technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself” which in modified form is also part of our investment thesis at...
2012
We are lucky to be starting the year with a few more days of family vacation with friends. In other words: the things that really matter. I have also been mostly off the grid for almost 10 days and will stay off for through the end of Thursday the 5th. I did the same last year and am happy with how it has let me reflect on the year past and prepare for next year. The regular scheduled programming...
December 2011
13 posts
3 tags
Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis (Book Review)
In Public Parts, Jeff Jarvis tackles the incredibly challenging and important topic of the impact of the internet on privacy and publicness. Jeff calls himself a “publicness advocate” in contrast with the often nameless “privacy advocates” who are cited whenever there is a discussion about a change in how Facebook works or the WSJ goes on an anti-cookie bender. As you can...
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Tech Tuesday: Survey Says!
Thanks for everyone who participated in the Tech Tuesday survey. I learned a lot. First off, not surprisingly, my audience overall is fairly tech savvy with 2/3rds knowing at least how to code up HTML and over 1/2 having done some programming.
Second, I was happy to find that the level of difficulty was about right and that if anything I should maybe add some harder “bonus”...
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ALF Yourself: Tracking Your CO2 Footprint Via AMEE...
Last week I was in London to spend time with the team from AMEE. On the flight to London, I read an article that provided a potent reminder of the importance of measuring CO2 emissions. The Independent had a big story on Methane gas being released from the Arctic sea floor off the coast of Siberia in far larger quantities than previously feared. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas (20x...
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Louis CK and the Future of Paid Content
Comedians get to say what most of us think but don’t have the courage or circumstance to say. Louis CK has a fantastic new special out (warning: if you are easily offended this is definitely not for you) that is full of hilarious but also poignant observations about the human condition. That special also marks a critical breakthrough in the future of content: it is a paid direct to...
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Tech Tuesday: Asking for Direction
So I got up earlier than usual this morning to work on a post about more details on how CPUs work and some actual assembly language. In particular I was planning to introduce the notion of registers and maybe the stack (all of this using a neat web-based 6502 emulator).
But then it occurred to me that I really don’t have a good sense of whether this is what folks want to read about. So I...
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Patents and the Growing Anti-Commons
The patent wars have really been heating up. For some time now Apple has been going around trying to get various Android devices off the market based on patent claims. Now the shoe is on the other foot as a court in Germany has found in favor of Motorola Mobility against Apple based on a patent. Of course Motorola Mobility is in the process of being acquired by Google so that its trove of...
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The Courage of Big Changes
As soon as your new startup has some actual endusers a fear of changes sets in. What if people don’t like it? What if they start to protest? I sometimes meet startups with only thousands of users that are firmly in the grip of this fear. That’s why it is so awesome to see companies such as Facebook and Twitter with hundreds of millions of users still make big changes to their...
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Edmodo: Adding Greylock and Benchmark
After yesterday’s Twilio announcement, this will make two funding posts in a row but that’s just how it worked out: Edmodo today announced that the company has raised $15 million in a round led by Greylock and Benchmark. Reid Hoffman and Matt Cohler will be joining the Edmodo board. We are super excited about how this allows Edmodo to continue growing and deliver on their vision of...
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Twilio: Fueling Up for Growth
Twilio has been growing rapidly in the US and they recently launched in the UK for voice with text coming soon. In addition to geographic expansion, Twilio has also been adding awesome new services such as Twilio Client and Twilio Connect. We are excited to be supporting Team Twilio together with the fine folks from Bessemer with a $17 million Series C financing. Congrats to the entire team on...
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Tech Tuesday: Programming (A Start)
Maybe I should have started the whole Tech Tuesday series with a post on programming since that’s why computers were created in the first place! In fact, thinking about programming in many ways precedes the availability of actual computers to carry out those programs. At the time that Babbage was dreaming up his Analytical Engine, Lady Ada started to formulate how a general purpose machine...
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Let's Kill the Quiet Period
Much of the regulation that we have in the financial markets (and other markets for that matter) predates the Internet. While there has been the occasional patch here and there, too many anachronistic concepts remain that should simply be eliminated entirely. My favorite example is the “quiet period.” As even the SEC notes on their own web site, the quiet period isn’t even...
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SOPA as Prohibition (Darknets Are Bad For Society)
I am probably not the first to come up with this analogy (and I am on a flight without wifi, so I can’t look it up either) but it just struck me that there are big parallels between SOPA and Prohibition. How? In that the unintended consequences will far outweigh the benefits, especially when it comes to crime. Prohibition didn’t stop the consumption of alcohol. It just drove it...
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Negotiating a Term Sheet
There have been many great posts about the various terms that go into a termsheet for a venture investment. As a result entrepreneurs are much better informed which is a good thing all around. I am still puzzled at times though at the approaches taken by both VC firms and entrepreneurs when it comes to actually negotiating a term sheet. Here are a few things that I have learned.
For VCs (I...
November 2011
20 posts
2 tags
Privacy and Facebook
So Facebook settled with the FTC over privacy and Mark Zuckerberg wrote another apologetic blog post (as pointed out by Liz Gannes this is his tenth). Part of the need for these apologies comes from Facebook’s aggressive approach to releasing features which at some level is admirable in a company of their scale. But what is really driving the problems is a fundamental conundrum about...
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Tech Tuesday: Operating Systems (Making It All...
I ended last week’s Tech Tuesday on Input/Output saying I might write next about programming in assembly language, but it has since occurred to me that I should cover at least one other high level topic first: operating systems. That seems more logical since the operating system (OS) is what makes all the parts of a computer system work together. In fact, I alluded to that last week in the...
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Hugo (Movie Review)
On Saturday, I went to see Hugo by Martin Scorsese with our two boys and my Mom who is visiting from Germany. It was my Mom’s first 3D movie and she was thoroughly enchanted by the effects, reaching for floating elements several times and loudly oohing. The 3D was used well throughout and with only a few “poke at the audience” moments that all more or less worked. As an aside:...
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Giving Thanks (To Teachers)
Since I am taking tomorrow and Friday off from blogging, I figured I would write about giving thanks today. I am finding a great many things to be thankful for from good health to amazing work (that frankly doesn’t feel like work at all). But the specific thing I have in mind today is giving thanks for and to the teachers in our lives. I am always encouraging our children to thank their...
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Tech Tuesday: Input/Output (Interrupts and Queues)
So far in Tech Tuesday we have taken a first look at how a computer does its work (processor), where it keeps data for quick access (memory), where data is kept longer term (storage) and how computers talk to each other (networking). Today’s topic is how to get data in and out of computers and to and from such things as printers, keyboards, screens, sensors, and more. These things are...
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Sharing: One Network (To Rule Them All) or Network...
Yesterday, Techmeme was ablaze with posts about sharing on Facebook’s Open Graph. A CNet post by Molly Wood with the title “How Facebook is ruining sharing” appears to have kicked it all off. In it she argues that the automated (“frictionless”) sharing via Open Graph apps results in a lot more noise rather than signal. Marshall Kirkpartrick at RWW holds the same...
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Shapeways Brings the Future of Stuff to New York...
When we announced the USV investment in Shapeways a little over a year ago, I pointed out the potential to make New York City a global center for 3D printing. Since then the Shapeways team has done a lot to make that happen. Here are just a few of the highlights. First, the founders relocated themselves and their families from Eindhoven in the Netherlands to New York City. Then they proceeded...
6 tags
Republic, Lost and United
Yesterday saw the beginning of a massive effort across a large number of Internet companies to help stop PIPA/SOPA legislation. While that is an important fight it is worth asking - can we afford to fight bad bills one at a time? Why do we even wind up with terrible bills like this in the first place? In his new book “Republic, Lost” Larry Lessig accumulates an impressive amount of...
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American Censorship Day
Starting today and for the foreseeable future the “Continuations” at the top of this blog will be covered with a call to Stop Censorship. If you read yesterday’s Tech Tuesday post on networking or are familiar with the history of the architecture of the Internet you know that a lack of global control was a core principle behind the design of TCP/IP. That has been key to the...
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Tech Tuesday: No Computer is an Island...
It is funny how quickly we take things for granted that didn’t exist just a few years back (obligatory reference to Louis C.K. rant about appreciating technology). Today the thought of using a computer that’s not connected to a network is almost unimaginable. What would you do on that computer? How would you install new software? How would you send/receive email? How would you browse...
Work on an Amazing Community: Wattpad is Hiring...
A few months ago we invested in Toronto-based Wattpad. In introducing the investment, I wrote the following paragraph on the Union Square Ventures blog:
Wattpad is a community for telling and reading stories. Collectively, Wattpad users last quarter spent an amazing 2 billion minutes writing and reading stories on Wattpad. During that time, nearly three quarter million new stories or parts of...
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Wikipedia, Occupy Wallstreet and the Possibility...
Whenever my kids tell me how their teachers don’t want them to use Wikipedia as a source I redouble my effort to show them why Wikipedia is important and how it works. In particular, I make sure they understand how to look at the history of a page and to check out the discussion or “talk” page that sits behind the content page. Two principles of those pages are critically...
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Emergency Broadcast System Fails Social Test
While I was driving the kids around on the weekend one of the radio stations announced that there would be the first ever nation wide test of the Emergency Broadcast System. My almost immediate reaction was something like “isn’t Twitter now the Emergency Broadcast system”? I wound up forgetting about the whole thing seconds later (probably because I arrived at whatever place I...
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Thinking About Social Networks
This morning on Techmeme I ran across three interesting and thought provoking pieces about social networks (all from within the last 24 hours it seems):
1. Maciej Ceglowski’s “The Social Graph is Neither” (10 points for great title alone) is a hilarious dissection of what’s wrong with explicitly declared relationships and even with the act of declaring relationships. It is...
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Tech Tuesday: Storage (Oh My, How It Has Grown)
So far of the building blocks for computer systems we have covered processors and memory. We have seen that processors have become massively faster and that memory has become massively cheaper. Today we will learn about storage and find that it has become massively bigger. Throughout this discussion we will use a somewhat eclectic reference point: the length of that great American novel...