I am obviously late to the Start Fund party (since I don’t blog on weekends and wrote about games instead yesterday). The Yuri Milner + SV Angels deal to fund YC companies is interesting but I think for slightly different reasons than I have seen mentioned (I have only read a few posts, so quite possible that someone else has pointed this out already). First, it aims squarely at the critical funding gap that all accelerator programs have. Teams can make impressive progress in just a few month...

I am obviously late to the Start Fund party (since I don’t blog on weekends and wrote about games instead yesterday). The Yuri Milner + SV Angels deal to fund YC companies is interesting but I think for slightly different reasons than I have seen mentioned (I have only read a few posts, so quite possible that someone else has pointed this out already). First, it aims squarely at the critical funding gap that all accelerator programs have. Teams can make impressive progress in just a few month...

I have been reading and thoroughly enjoying “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonigal (love the name too!). One basic premise of book is that games are engaging exactly because they represent a “better” version of reality in which missions are clear, feedback is more direct, failing is fun (careening off the track), … At the same time, I have started to learn how to play piano from a fake book. A fake book only shows the right hand melody and then indicates the chords that should go along with it...

I have been reading and thoroughly enjoying “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonigal (love the name too!). One basic premise of book is that games are engaging exactly because they represent a “better” version of reality in which missions are clear, feedback is more direct, failing is fun (careening off the track), … At the same time, I have started to learn how to play piano from a fake book. A fake book only shows the right hand melody and then indicates the chords that should go along with it...

We live in a time of amazing transformation. Nowhere has this been more apparent recently than in Tunisia and Egypt where people are fighting against entrenched regimes and for democracy. In both places the Internet has played a critical role as an organizing, information and documentation tool. So it is not surprising that authorities in Egypt have taken steps to cut off the people there from all modern forms of communication and especially the Internet. It couldn’t be any clearer that the I...

We live in a time of amazing transformation. Nowhere has this been more apparent recently than in Tunisia and Egypt where people are fighting against entrenched regimes and for democracy. In both places the Internet has played a critical role as an organizing, information and documentation tool. So it is not surprising that authorities in Egypt have taken steps to cut off the people there from all modern forms of communication and especially the Internet. It couldn’t be any clearer that the I...

And now for something completely different. Like most (all?) geeks, I love the idea of human space travel. I know we have got tons of problems to fix here, but I don’t think that should deter us from pursuing some of our other dreams (after all we wouldn’t have airplanes either had folks waited for everything else to be dandy). So I was dismayed to read that NASA’s mandate continues to be to pursue a heavy lift strategy. It is the space travel equivalent of scaling up instead of scaling out. ...

And now for something completely different. Like most (all?) geeks, I love the idea of human space travel. I know we have got tons of problems to fix here, but I don’t think that should deter us from pursuing some of our other dreams (after all we wouldn’t have airplanes either had folks waited for everything else to be dandy). So I was dismayed to read that NASA’s mandate continues to be to pursue a heavy lift strategy. It is the space travel equivalent of scaling up instead of scaling out. ...

I know that “don’t compete - change the game” can easily be seen as kind of a trite slogan. But I still find myself in many meetings with startups where the strategy can be summed up by: our plan is to do this better than our competitors. While out-executing others is possible and companies succeed with that approach, it is really difficult. It is especially difficult, if one of the competitors is a deeply entrenched incumbent. Because startups are already hard (creating something from nothin...

I know that “don’t compete - change the game” can easily be seen as kind of a trite slogan. But I still find myself in many meetings with startups where the strategy can be summed up by: our plan is to do this better than our competitors. While out-executing others is possible and companies succeed with that approach, it is really difficult. It is especially difficult, if one of the competitors is a deeply entrenched incumbent. Because startups are already hard (creating something from nothin...

I took a Lufthansa flight from Newark to Munich to attend DLD11. As usual, I booked economy in keeping with my philosophy of doing what most entrepreneurs of early stage startups would do. As it turned out, I had enough miles to upgrade to business. Now my fare was not an upgradeable fare, so I offered to pay the difference. The ticket agent proceeded to make the necessary changes which took a lot of time (15 minutes). Finally she swiped my credit card and then as the very last step, she swip...

I took a Lufthansa flight from Newark to Munich to attend DLD11. As usual, I booked economy in keeping with my philosophy of doing what most entrepreneurs of early stage startups would do. As it turned out, I had enough miles to upgrade to business. Now my fare was not an upgradeable fare, so I offered to pay the difference. The ticket agent proceeded to make the necessary changes which took a lot of time (15 minutes). Finally she swiped my credit card and then as the very last step, she swip...

I am thrilled to see Larry Page take over as CEO from Eric Schmidt. In a post a few months back I had expressed my worry that Google was headed the way of Yahoo under too much “professional management” and not enough visionary founder leadership (contrasting it at the time with Facebook). Instead of a list of 6 things that he should do, I believe Larry really only needs to succeed at one: re-establish clarity of vision for the company. The vision I would love to see Google embrace is: Google ...

I am thrilled to see Larry Page take over as CEO from Eric Schmidt. In a post a few months back I had expressed my worry that Google was headed the way of Yahoo under too much “professional management” and not enough visionary founder leadership (contrasting it at the time with Facebook). Instead of a list of 6 things that he should do, I believe Larry really only needs to succeed at one: re-establish clarity of vision for the company. The vision I would love to see Google embrace is: Google ...

LivingSocial yesterday was selling $20 for $10, which is a good deal for everyone buying it (and remembering to then make use of their Amazon gift card). Not surprisingly, they sold at least 1 million for a total value of $20 million. Now if everyone who bought one of these were a new LivingSocial registered user, that would amount to a $10 customer acquisition cost. That’s of course a lower bound because there are likely to have been quite a few existing LivingSocial users and some fraction ...

LivingSocial yesterday was selling $20 for $10, which is a good deal for everyone buying it (and remembering to then make use of their Amazon gift card). Not surprisingly, they sold at least 1 million for a total value of $20 million. Now if everyone who bought one of these were a new LivingSocial registered user, that would amount to a $10 customer acquisition cost. That’s of course a lower bound because there are likely to have been quite a few existing LivingSocial users and some fraction ...

If there was any doubt, the iPad is a huge winner for Apple with 7.3 million units shipped in the last quarter. Casual observation from flying a fair bit has made that obvious over the last few months. You can’t walk through a packed air plane (and they are mostly packed these days) without seeing a ton of iPads. Most people are watching movies on theirs, some play games and very few do anything else (some email, some web browsing). What one doesn’t see at all – so far – are Android tablets. ...

If there was any doubt, the iPad is a huge winner for Apple with 7.3 million units shipped in the last quarter. Casual observation from flying a fair bit has made that obvious over the last few months. You can’t walk through a packed air plane (and they are mostly packed these days) without seeing a ton of iPads. Most people are watching movies on theirs, some play games and very few do anything else (some email, some web browsing). What one doesn’t see at all – so far – are Android tablets. ...

Fred posted over the weekend about deficit reduction. What we really need though is not cutting within the existing system, but rather restructuring government for the age of the Internet. We currently seem to be in the habit of piling patches upon poorly working systems. It is as if we were trying to cope with decades of technical debt with a couple of maintenance releases as opposed to a fundamental refactoring. Where we should look instead is at what is possible in the private sector. If V...

Fred posted over the weekend about deficit reduction. What we really need though is not cutting within the existing system, but rather restructuring government for the age of the Internet. We currently seem to be in the habit of piling patches upon poorly working systems. It is as if we were trying to cope with decades of technical debt with a couple of maintenance releases as opposed to a fundamental refactoring. Where we should look instead is at what is possible in the private sector. If V...