Continuations

Investor Signaling (Adding to Chris Dixon)

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:50:47 -0500

Chris Dixon had a great post yesterday about “the importance of investor signaling in venture pricing” that every entrepreneur should read. Leaving aside the classical economics strawman from the first paragraph (does anybody think that classical economics would apply to a small numbers situation with extreme information asymmetry?), the rest of the post is spot on. Here are a couple more reasons why investor signaling plays such a powerful role in the venture market:

Most companies need more than one round of financing. Interest by other VCs in the early round suggest that they might also be interested in subsequent rounds making it easier to finance the company going forward.
Internal partnership dynamics may make it much easier for a partner to get a deal done that other firms are interested in also compared to an idiosyncratic deal.

Chris does a great job laying out some of the implications for entrepreneurs. Here are a few more corollaries:

If there is a sudden interest in your firm due to some external event, you should seriously consider fundraising even if it is ahead of your planned schedule.
Informal fundraising can help avoid the “on the market too long” problem. It’s better to meet with some VCs and tell them the story when you don’t (yet) need additional money.
Focus on lead investors: firms and partners at those firms that either have led investment rounds or are clearly ready to do so. You can tell a lot by whether someone is actively seeking an investment in your area and has clear reasons why they are interested (that don’t involve other investors).

Looking forward to more of Chris’s outstanding posts.

The Future of Browser Plugins (Hint: Let's Call them Apps)

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:45:15 -0500

At Union Square Ventures we have backed a couple of companies that use browser plugins at the core of their services (Adaptive Blue, Zemanta). We have always been concerned about the potentially lower sign-up rates from requiring someone to install a plugin. The installation process on Firefox required an onerous restart (even for updates to already installed plugins!). In fact, our concern has been so significant that we have passed on a few opportunities that had plugins as central to their strategy. I believe that this could change dramatically in the near term. First, Chrome has an extension architecture that does not require a restart and allows for dynamic updates to plugins. Second, people seem to have no problem with installing apps on their phones. So what’s missing is a change in terminology - let’s call plugins browser apps - and a marketplace. The latter can help not just with discovery but also with ratings and safety. Now before anyone can even start to mention HTML5 - yes it’s great, but a plugin, I mean app, can still do more because it is user centric, not site centric. For instance, extension.fm can deliver its experience only because it sees music on all sites I go to!

Every Review Should Have A Comment Thread

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:19:59 -0500

Looks like I managed to put the entire post into the title, so maybe I should have just tweeted it. But here is a little bit of background. I was talking to a friend of mine last week who has a newly released app in the app store. She told me that while a lot of people loved it, some hated it. She wasn’t so much offended by that but rather annoyed at her inability to respond to the negative reviews “in situ,” especially given that she felt that many of them completely missed the point of the app.

That made me think of the problems Yelp has recently encountered over their handling of negative reviews. The removal of a review is a nuclear option and should be used only as a last resort. I am pretty sure far fewer venue owners would be upset if they were able to simply respond to a negative review right there.

With a comment thread, everybody would get so much more value from reviews because there would be so much more signal to go on. Did someone take the time to respond to a negative review? Was their explanation logical? Did anyone else step in to defend the product or service? Did the person who originally complained go back and respond to the response? Would be great to see some large sites do this to set the precedent.

The Business of Code, The Code of Business

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:36:36 -0500

Blogged about “The Business of Code, The Code of Business” yesterday on the Google Code blog. “The Business of Code” part talks about how the economics of being an independent software company are being transformed by the web and by cloud computing, potentially limiting the number of opportunities available. “The Code of Business” part addresses how the structure of industries and corporations is being transformed, which provided a countervailing force that is likely to create some very exciting opportunities.

As an aside, the post title is inspired by one of my favorite quotes. Italo Calvino in The Uses of Literature described Roland Barthes as possessing “the pleasure of intelligence and the intelligence of pleasure.”

Oscar Fight(s) Recap: ABC vs Cablevision, Hurt Locker vs Avatar

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:42:40 -0500

Yesterday’s Oscars were notable for two different fights: ABC vs. Cablevision and Hurt Locker vs. Avatar. The first of these is a perfect illustration of what I call “fighting over the digital pie.” The reason things got so vicious between ABC and Cablevision and resolved only slightly past the last minute (as far as Oscar coverage goes) is simple: dollars from TV distribution (carriage fees) are shrinking and everyone wants a bigger piece while there is still something to be had.

It is completely clear that over some time all of this will move to streaming and the big winner will be the Academy itself (or anyone else actually originating live content). This will take a while, but TV networks at best don’t add much (NBC coverage of the winter Olympics?) and cable is purely a pipe. At home we sampled the Red Carpet coverage on a high quality stream from ABC.com which showed how irrelevant Cablevision is other than as a bandwidth provider. Even the actual Oscars we were able to quickly find a bunch of illegal streams (of much reduced quality, but the opportunity for the Oscars to go direct is real).

The second fun fight of the night was between Hurt Locker and Avatar. Despite my having been a rabid fan boy for Avatar, I was not surprised to see Hurt Locker clean up. For starters, it is an excellent movie. The criticism that it is an unrealistic depiction of war is, in my view, misguided. Hurt Locker is a character study of extreme risk taking, not an Iraq war documentary. What made both Hurt Locker and Avatar attractive as Oscar contenders is that they were made by directors on their own terms (and of course it provided some extra frisson to know that Kathryn Bigelow had been married to James Cameron).

But the voting was no surprise. First, I doubt that members of the Academy have forgiven Cameron for his “King of the World” acceptance speech for Titanic. Second, everyone can see themselves as coming up with a movie such as Hurt Locker eventually, whereas Avatar — by virtue of its budget alone — is seen as an extreme one-off (at least until the next one comes along). Third, Oscar voting has always had an element of it is “someone’s turn” and a female director was a good fit for that.

All in all - by far the most entertaining Oscars in a long time. And that didn’t even require watching the actual show!

The Internet Transformation (Talk Outline)

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:08:31 -0500

Today at noon I am giving a talk to the Japan Business Network in New York — an informal get together organized by my brother-in-law, Charles Danziger. The topic is the fundamental transformation of industries that the Internet will bring about. I am planning to use the following outline.

Some background on Union Square Ventures
- about $300 million under management across two funds
- invest exclusively in the Internet
- based in New York but national mandate (and some international investments)
- mostly lead first institutional round
- well-known investments include Twitter, Zynga, Etsy, Foursquare

Fundamental USV thesis
- The Internet will change everything
- This will go on for a long time (decades)
- Will provide significant startup and new investment opportunities along the way

First story: Newspapers
- these were big and mighty businesses
- they existed for a long time (100+ years)
- highly profitable for a long time

Along comes: the Internet

Step 1: Unbundling of economics (online classifieds)
- job classifieds: HotJobs, Monster
- for sale: eBay
- dating: various sites
- all of the above: Craigslist
-> result: major source of profits removed

Step 2: Unbundling of content
- the rise of blogs
- specialist publications
- user generated content
-> result: splitting of audiences

Net result: newspapers everywhere are struggling

Second story: Disrupting the disruptors

Job classifieds: HotJobs, Monster
- 1:1 translation of offline model to online
- listing for a fee
- really just playing on cost advantage

Along comes: Indeed

Vertical search for jobs
- find jobs wherever they are
- can only be done on the Internet
- native revenue model: keyword advertising

Third story: The new news businesses

Blogs
- Blogs have low cost structure
- Many blogs don’t need to make money directly (side project, lead generation, etc)
- Targeting specific audiences
- Highly varying levels of analysis / original thinking / reporting

Aggregators: Techmeme
- Analyze link structure
- Analyze social media / real-time web
- Run software in the cloud — all variable cost
- Small team

Extrapolating
- Not just the news business — all businesses
- Why?

Many other businesses with huge information/content components
- Education
- Healthcare

Education example

What about manufacturing?
- 3D printing
- separation of model making and “printing”
- lot size 1
- mass customization

But goes deeper: fundamental fabric of organizations
- Modern corporation now > 100 years old
- Command and control structure
- Trade-off between motivation and cooperation/information sharing
- Transition to “small pieces, loosely joined” (like architecture of the Internet)

Doesn’t stop there: governments?

We are in for an exciting ride into the future.

More Thoughts on EBook Pricing

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:29:53 -0500

The New York Times had a piece yesterday on ebook pricing, which I have written about before. Interestingly, the piece simply states and doesn’t question that an ebook retailer such as Apple should be entitled to a 30% fee.

What will Apple provide? There would seem to be four separate functions: discovery, payment, delivery and DRM. Let’s start with payment. The fraud rate for ebooks is likely to be very low and the cost to process a payment at scale should be no more than 25 cents (and hopefully even less in the future if companies such as Square succeed even). Delivery is essentially free, as most ebooks are a couple of MB big at best. Discovery is something that Apple does well for music with Genius, but by far does not have a monopoly on with music blogs and services such as last.fm and Pandora. For books the same is likely to be true. Apple may have roll out a Genius feature for those also, but there are many other places to discover books such as Goodreads or DailyLit. With a lot of competition for discovery it seems to me that it should not command more than 50 cents to $1 per book.

Now at 30% on a $12.99 book, Apple is getting almost $3.90 per book, which after subtracting my estimates for payment, discovery and delivery leaves over $2.50 for DRM and Apple profit. That does not seem either reasonable or sustainable to me in the long run.

Undercover Boss (In Your Startup)

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:25:49 -0500

We took a quick look yesterday at the Closing Ceremony for the Winter Olympics, which was painful (Shatner, really?) but as we flipped to another channel, we ran across Undercover Boss on CBS. The premise of the series is simple: a boss from a large company works “undercover” at the frontlines of the business. The (first?) episode was one of the family owners of White Castle working shifts at several of their restaurants and at two of their supply facilities.

On the downside, like all reality TV, the show appears heavily scripted / produced. For instance, in just three days of working, the White Castle owner encountered a bunch of great people working in the fast food restaurants, such as a 17-year old aspiring chef (who was then promptly given a scholarship). On the upside, I have personally experienced how incredibly distant top management can be from frontline issues and this show could just give a bunch of people a nudge to experience their own companies.

Now startup founders might think that this show obviously only applies to large corporations. After all, they know all of their employees by name and see them every day. But there is an important analog that is available to even the smallest startup: use your own product/service as if you were just a regular enduser. It is so easy to get caught up in the “fog of startup” that sometimes glaring product/service issues go unnoticed or at least stay unresolved (acting as an enduser is also good discipline for board members!).

As a startup gets larger founders would do well to go back and take on roles like customer service or sales for a day. Of course they won’t be incognito, but it will still prove to be an eye opening experience. In addition, new hires for senior positions should start out rotating through or accompanying some of those roles as well. This will expose people with a fresh set of eyes to what is actually going on, which even in a startup can be quite different from what founders (and the board) have led themselves to believe.

Cloud Computing = Democratization of Applications

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:24:05 -0500

The Web brought us the democratization of content. Cloud Computing will do the same for applications. That will be one of my key themes for the Cloud Computing panel this afternoon at the Wharton Business Technology conference (that’s assuming that my Acela which is already 30 minutes late will make it to Philly in time). Prior to the Web, to get a piece of content out to the world required going through some gatekeeper like a publisher for books or a label for music. Now anyone can post content and reach the world. The Web theoretically made the same true for applications through web delivered functionality, but two important constraints applied: first scaling was hard and second everyone was building stovepipes. Cloud computing will remove both of these constraints. First, we are getting close to where developers can focus almost entirely on what their application does and spend very little time on how to scale it as more and more users sign up. We are not there yet, but the progress over the last couple of years has been simply astounding. Second, whether by choice or by enduser demand, applications in the cloud are all exposing APIs. Instead of stovepipes it is now possible to create a new application by focusing only on the new pieces and easily integrating with all the existing services. Both of these will vastly reduce the effort required to deliver a an application to anyone in the world. That is the democratization of applications. No more gatekeepers for applications - and I am aware those used to include VCs …

Burn Rate as the Canonical Mistake (for Web Startups)

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:41:43 -0500

One of the all time great opening lines is from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I am beginning to think that the opposite is true for (web) startups. There seem to be surprisingly many roads to success. But the canonical road to trouble appears to be taking your burn rate up *before* you have something that is really working.

Over the past couple of weeks I have seen two startups that are in very different positions, despite superficial similarities. They both have fully launched services in interesting areas and with some traction but that have not yet really taken off. They are both iterating on their services. But one has spent $5 million already whereas the other has spent less than one tenth of that.

The mood between the two companies couldn’t be more different. One is filled with excitement about a new twist on their service that they are pursuing at a current burn rate of less than $40K per month, which represents the highest it has been. The other is struggling to make changes they know they need but their burn is still $100K per month, despite having come down significantly from where it has been.

Only time will tell whether the low burn rate company will succeed, but they have a great many more options available for themselves. They could get acquired and have in fact had some offers (they do have some traction after all) and even a modest acquisition would pay back investors and leave something over for the founders. They could raise just a bit more money and keep iterating for a long time. Or if they happen to hit it right with their latest iteration they can quickly and cleanly raise a fair bit of money.

Nothing really new here in this post — this is after all the mantra of the lean startup movement — but it can’t be said often enough! And this recent experience brought the contrast home so starkly that I felt compelled to write about it not just for others but as a reminder to myself.

Defending (Internet) Freedom

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:11:18 -0500

I love Italy - for vacations, that is. But the decision by a judge in Milan to convict several Google employees for the posting of a bullying video on Youtube is a serious threat to the potential of the Internet to be a force for freedom. I have been critical of Google many times on this blog, but agree wholeheartedly with their assessment of how troubling this is:

European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence. (…) If that principle is swept aside and sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them — every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video — then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear.

This principle is also currently under attack from the oddly-named and secretively negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). A recently leaked draft chapter is showing that ACTA appears to be shaping up as “DMCA plus.“ While ACTA provides for safe harbor provisions it appears to significantly increase the requirements on ISPs and other service providers to qualify for the safe harbors. Given the secret ACTA process (it is not even clear whether the leaked chapter is the real deal), it is not only virtually impossible to know where this will wind up, but most citizens won’t know about it or be able to express their views until it is potentially too late.

At USV, we believe in the transformative nature of the Internet. As a technology optimist, I am convinced it will ultimately enable broad improvement in society. But the existing (power) structures won’t give in without a fight. Keeping the Internet a decentralized network (of networks) and maintaining the independence and neutrality of individual layers will be essential.

Apple and "1-Click Sex"

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:50:57 -0500

Over the last few days, Apple has removed a number of apps from the app store that have, as the New York Times’s Jenna Wortham put it “sexually suggestive” material. There is plenty of speculation on the motives, such as VentureBeat’s idea that this is about winning over educators to the iPad. I think the actual explanation is likely to be simpler.

Browsing and discovery are broken in the app store. If these were working well, then there would be no need to remove apps like this (for any reason). Instead, they would be visible only to those specifically searching for them. Imagine coming to the Google home page and finding a list of the most popular web pages in various categories. Unfiltered I am pretty sure that would include a bunch of porn. This could be one source of complaints but I suspect that access by children is more important.

Theoretically parental controls are supposed to help keep this content away from children, but that of course requires some non-trivial configuration, as this tutorial shows. I believe that most people buy iPod Touches or even iPhones for their kids and simply hand them over without ever going through these steps (we didn’t — but that’s because we don’t believe in filtering for kids — more on that in a separate blog post). Without these controls “questionable” apps are just 1-click away for kids.

Phil Schiller cites “customer complaints from women” in his NYT interview as the reason for the app removal. Based on the above, I suspect many if not most of them are mothers who discover that their children have actually purchased “inappropriate” apps (as opposed to just browsed the web). There were a huge number of iPod Touches given as Christmas presents this year and the timing of this removal could be the result of that.

I am surprised that Apple did not solve this problem by defaulting to a “safe mode” (and fixing app store browsing/discovery), but instead resorted to removing the apps. This suggests that there are technology issues behind the scenes that prevent them from making sufficiently rapid changes to the App Store.

Unemployment and Structural Change (2)

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:28:09 -0500

I have written previously about unemployment and structural change in the economy, arguing that we are facing a particularly bad outlook for employment. The New York Times on Saturday had a good article on this subject that combined some chilling statistics with a couple of stories of individuals suffering the consequences. Probably the most important chart from the article is this:

The dramatic growth in long-term unemployment is the surest indicator of structural change. To the extent that there are jobs, they are in different areas of the economy (both geographically and more importantly in different sectors). The accompanying stories make the same point that while some jobs are available, the long-term unemployed live in the wrong place (and lack the resources to relocate) and/or have the wrong skills and experience.

I believe the magnitude of this problem will eventually become so large that it will force us to reconsider many of the most basic ideas about how society is organized. My thinking on this was spurred by reading Brad Feld’s post on a book call “The Lights in the Tunnel” which considers a future of 75% unemployment. I have started to read the book itself, but can’t recommend it as the writing strikes me as muddled at best — instead, I am planning to write more blog posts on the subject. What’s critical is to keep in mind that at the same time that employment is disappearing, we are also heading towards an age of abundance (starting with digital goods).

Staying Young (Turning 43)

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:32:05 -0500

So I am turning 43 today - an age that at one point I considered ancient! Yet in many ways I feel younger today than a decade ago (OK - that does not include my speed for clearing the snow off our driveway). I attribute that to spending so much time with entrepreneurs. It is not just that many of the teams in our portfolio are young, it is that all entrepreneurs seem young in a fundamental way: they have retained their sense of possibility. That sense that the world can be changed, new things can be created and that the future will be better than the past. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have this influence in my life. My only birthday wish is for more of the same. That and contributions to http://mycharitywater.org/albert

Some Thoughts on Google Buzz

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:23:05 -0500

I got Google Buzz last night in my gmail account and have started to play around with it a bit. Here are some initial thoughts.

First off, I agree with Andrew that the integration of Buzz with Gmail will turn out to be a net positive for adoption at least initially (and if it takes off there is always a way to make it available standalone).

Second, this roll out at scale is a very clear example of Google’s impressive infrastructure and how it enables innovation. Buzz is a big service with lots of features (e.g., likes, comments, payloads and private groups) and yet google is capable of making it available to its large global user base.

Third, it is another example of Google’s willingness to have potentially competing products/services move forward in parallel (here Wave and Buzz). Some people have seen this as a weakness, e.g. in complaints that there is no “roadmap.” I instead see this as a strength and mentioned that when Google announced Chrome OS (which has significant overlap and potential to compete with Android).

Fourth, Google is already doing some interesting things on the Buzz API side, both with how it is making updates from Buzz available (including PubSubHubbub notifications) and how information can get into Buzz (with apparently more programmatic access coming soon). This approach based on emerging standards is appealing.

Overall, it is way too early to tell whether Google Buzz will succeed, but I for one am impressed by this launch.

Email Killer Feature: Reply Processing

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:28:00 -0500

If you needed yet another reason to switch from operating your own MTA for transactional email to using a service provider, SendGrid recently introduced a killer feature: reply processing. No more need to send emails from “no-reply@thatsoundsrude.com.” Instead, let people take actions simply by replying to emails. This is a feature that I have absolutely loved about disqus from day one: being able to reply to comments by replying to the email I get from disqus. Tons of others should do this. Accept a friend request? Just reply “yes” to the notification email. SendGrid’s reply processing API takes all the hard work out of this. I can’t wait to find the time to switch DailyLit over to SendGrid for just that reason.

P.S. If you need yet another reason why you don’t want to operate your own MTA, try squashing the backscatter problem by properly configuring Postfix (and then realizing that Thunderbird no longer works). Spent two hours on that this weekend — a total waste of cycles that could be used for creating value for endusers!

The EBook Wars

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:37:40 -0500

I was away last week and so am late to the party when it comes to commenting on the fight between Amazon and book publishers. Here are a couple of observations.

First, I was surprised it took so long for this fight to start. It is a great example of what I call “fighting over the digital pie.” What was most fascinating about it is that none of the publishers even made a mention of how much authors would receive. At present, this is all about trying to support the existing cost structure of publishers with strong parallels to the fight between networks and cable.

Second, there has been some discussion around what it actually costs to put out a book today and how that might change with ebooks. The debate seems to be largely between two extremes: either that ebooks should be much much cheaper (often unsubstantiated) or that the only cost to actually go away is PP&B (paper, printing & binding) which makes up only a small portion of the total cost. Looking at several actual breakdowns of costs, not surprisingly the truth is likely to be somewhere in-between. Pre-production costs will remain for ebooks and depending on the number of formats and additional markup could actually go up a bit. But marketing costs are up for grabs as authors can start to build their own audience via blogging and books can be discovered via social networks. Wholesalers should go away and retail margins should be highly compressed. Publishers’ cut too is likely to get compressed as their value-added diminishes in a world where authors can be directly in touch with readers. Taken together, I believe that at least 50% of the existing cost basis of the book business could be obliterated for ebooks.

Third, even with a reduced cost basis, if ebooks are to be traditionally priced (which is to say the same price for each copy), they need to succeed with DRM, something that the music industry failed at. Personally, I abhor DRM because of its implications for computing devices (closed, not hackable, not trust worthy). But I am afraid that for the first time we are getting close to highly DRM’d general purpose devices succeeding in a mass market due to their superior design and user experience. It would be quite a Faustian bargain for all of us to accept DRM in the name of convenience and design. More on that in a separate post — until then I suggest reading Alex Payne’s post on the iPad.

Fourth, nobody seemed to suggest that charging the same price for a book to each reader is an antiquated idea. A literal adaptation of the historic price discrimination model of starting with a hardcover and then moving through softcover to mass market paperback shows a lack of imagination. There are many better and more effective ways of capturing consumer surplus for digital goods. Think Farmville!

Fifth and finally, throughout most of the discussion there appears a presumption by publishers and authors that there is some kind of god-given right, or short of that a cultural mandate, for them to be able to cover their costs. That view seems to ignore most of the history of publishing during which great works were authored but very few people made a living off it. I am convinced that we will see great books published in the future completely independent of the business model (or lack thereof) of the publishing industry and the income from book sales to authors. Whether it is mico-patronage a la Kickstarter, or income from a day job a la Rowling during the early Harry Potter work.

I am hopeful that in the end we will make it to a DRM-free ebook future with a new renaissance of content but for now it looks like we will have to watch the titans battle it out.

What Do AAPL and AMZN Have, that GOOG, Twitter and FB Need?

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:09:38 -0500

Each has more than 100 Million credit cards on file to enable 1-click purchases of content, apps, and virtual goods. When I compare doing anything involving payment on other platforms the experience is cumbersome to the point of being useless. My 10-year old son had no trouble hijacking my Kindle, finding the store and getting a book for himself. And that’s on the Kindle! On his iPod touch he blew through the app budget we had set for the month within the first two days of having it. It will be interesting to see who figures out how to catch up with Apple and Amazon and how they do it. In the meantime, companies like Zong with their Zong Plus offering are trying to get there independently. If they get to 10s of millions of linked credit cards, they will make a juicy acquisition target.

iPad: First Overhyped, Now Underestimated

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:16:52 -0500

Yesterday’s “reveal” of the iPad was predictably anti-climactic. With the hype that had built up, anything short of a mind-reading, teleporting device had to be a bit of a letdown. But we are now likely to enter the phase of underestimating the iPad. People are already obsessing about such flaws as the omission of a camera. Or the lack of support for Flash. Or the absence of multi-tasking. These critiques mostly miss a couple of crucial points. First, this is of course extremely similar to the history of the iPhone - what, no Cut-and-Paste? Apple very quickly came out with significant product improvements for the iPhone. I expect that it will be no different for the iPad. Second, while Apple wants you to have a great web experience, they want you to have an even better experience for certain categories (games, videos) through native apps for which Apple takes a cut. If they get enough devices out quickly that will succeed. Third, out of the gate the iPad meets four of my five personal requirements, which I had set out here http://continuations.com/post/321509690/slates-my-personal-requirements . It is much cheaper than had been rumored, making it possible to get more than one for the house. It looks like it would survive a coffee spill and 10 hrs of battery life would be an entire week of occasional usage around the house. Because it doesn’t have multi-tasking it is much simpler to operate. There is a Wifi only option. The only thing that seems to be missing out of the gate are user profiles that would make it easy to share. Bottomline, this is very much the device that I anticipated and I believe that it would be a mistake to dismiss it as an XXL iPod Touch.

More Great News for NYC's Startup Ecosystem: NYC SeedStart

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:55:28 -0500

Congrats to Owen Davis and everyone else involved for launching NYC SeedStart 2010. I have long argued that there is no such thing as too much seed capital and SeedStart is a terrific addition. It is amazing that until now New York City did not have such a program, given the success of YCombinator, TechStars, Dreamit, Launchbox, SeedCamp, FBFund Rev and others. I am also thrilled to see that NYC SeedStart has adopted a simple financing model - $20,000/team for 5% of the company. Now very much looking forward to the first crop of companies!