I am very excited to be working with Joshua again. You can read (a bit) more on the Union Square Ventures blog about our investment in Tasty Labs.

Fred has a post today titled “Mobile First, Web Second” http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/mobile-first-web-second-continued.html which is spot on. There is an important additional reason for pursuing this strategy: on the web everything is about displacement, on mobile there is still mostly open space. The vast majority of people are yet to settle into the apps that they will use every day on their mobiles. That makes it much easier for a new app to grow to millions of regular users than for a ...

I am very excited to be working with Joshua again. You can read (a bit) more on the Union Square Ventures blog about our investment in Tasty Labs.

Fred has a post today titled “Mobile First, Web Second” http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/mobile-first-web-second-continued.html which is spot on. There is an important additional reason for pursuing this strategy: on the web everything is about displacement, on mobile there is still mostly open space. The vast majority of people are yet to settle into the apps that they will use every day on their mobiles. That makes it much easier for a new app to grow to millions of regular users than for a ...

Yesterday, I gave $1,000 to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. With this post I want to convince you to do the same (or at least give something to him). Why? Because Ron Wyden has taken a stand against the awful proposed law known as COICA. If you don’t know what COICA is or why it is a terrible idea, please read my previous post about it. In that post, I provide a link to the page on the amazing Maplight.org that shows who has contributed to which Senator. First, interest groups that support COICA...

Yesterday, I gave $1,000 to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. With this post I want to convince you to do the same (or at least give something to him). Why? Because Ron Wyden has taken a stand against the awful proposed law known as COICA. If you don’t know what COICA is or why it is a terrible idea, please read my previous post about it. In that post, I provide a link to the page on the amazing Maplight.org that shows who has contributed to which Senator. First, interest groups that support COICA...

Listening to Mark Zuckerberg yesterday at W2Summit was fascinating. First, I have seen Mark’s performance on stage go from awkward and tentative three years ago to assured and compelling now. Second, it couldn’t be clearer that Mark is singularly in control of Facebook and aggressively building an organization that can deliver at top speed and scale. Third, Mark’s ambition and sense of what’s possible for Facebook are huge. He is very clear that getting to 500 million active users is just the...

Listening to Mark Zuckerberg yesterday at W2Summit was fascinating. First, I have seen Mark’s performance on stage go from awkward and tentative three years ago to assured and compelling now. Second, it couldn’t be clearer that Mark is singularly in control of Facebook and aggressively building an organization that can deliver at top speed and scale. Third, Mark’s ambition and sense of what’s possible for Facebook are huge. He is very clear that getting to 500 million active users is just the...

Super detailed post by Bill Gurley about IPOs followed by a riff from Fred with more good reasons why could and should see more IPOs from Internet companies. So I am piling on with an IPO post as well, but one about how (at least some) Internet companies should be doing IPOs. And since yesterday I used 3.0 (with regard to photo sharing), I figured I’d throw in another version number today. The 2.0 reference here is not gratuitous though. The term “Web 2.0” has gone out of vogue some time back...

Super detailed post by Bill Gurley about IPOs followed by a riff from Fred with more good reasons why could and should see more IPOs from Internet companies. So I am piling on with an IPO post as well, but one about how (at least some) Internet companies should be doing IPOs. And since yesterday I used 3.0 (with regard to photo sharing), I figured I’d throw in another version number today. The 2.0 reference here is not gratuitous though. The term “Web 2.0” has gone out of vogue some time back...

There is a whole resurgence of photo sharing and it is all based on creating a natively mobile experience (as opposed to adding mobile as an after thought). This is interesting two reasons. First, photo sharing is of course one of the most common activities on Facebook. Second, as I noted in a recent post on mobile opportunities, there is a big behavioral shift underway with people leaving their cameras at home and using their phones instead. So if a startup succeeds wildly here they will be ...

There is a whole resurgence of photo sharing and it is all based on creating a natively mobile experience (as opposed to adding mobile as an after thought). This is interesting two reasons. First, photo sharing is of course one of the most common activities on Facebook. Second, as I noted in a recent post on mobile opportunities, there is a big behavioral shift underway with people leaving their cameras at home and using their phones instead. So if a startup succeeds wildly here they will be ...

The rumor is that Facebook will on Monday unveil a fairly full fledged webmail solution. At the same time Google is working hard on some kind of new social network. Microsoft too is trying to have email, search, social, etc. all under one roof. The rationale here seems to be one of wanting to own as much of a user’s experience as possible. It is supported by an economic logic in which companies are making lots of money in one area and using that to subsidize other parts of functionality. Once...

The rumor is that Facebook will on Monday unveil a fairly full fledged webmail solution. At the same time Google is working hard on some kind of new social network. Microsoft too is trying to have email, search, social, etc. all under one roof. The rationale here seems to be one of wanting to own as much of a user’s experience as possible. It is supported by an economic logic in which companies are making lots of money in one area and using that to subsidize other parts of functionality. Once...

I am going to spend the better part of today building some models in Excel. Much as I love Google Docs, for any serious model I still go back to Excel without regrets. It is fast and versatile and I know it extremely well. I see a fair number of business budgets and financial models built in Excel. Many suffer from the same set of problems:Artificial precision: often there is an attempt to capture every line item down to office supplies – but those generally won’t make or break a business (un...

I am going to spend the better part of today building some models in Excel. Much as I love Google Docs, for any serious model I still go back to Excel without regrets. It is fast and versatile and I know it extremely well. I see a fair number of business budgets and financial models built in Excel. Many suffer from the same set of problems:Artificial precision: often there is an attempt to capture every line item down to office supplies – but those generally won’t make or break a business (un...

My routine online reading has narrowed somewhat precipitously to Tumblr, Techmeme, Hacker News and HuffPo. Would love to find out what folks are reading daily or at least frequently (minimum once a week) online across categories: tech, politics, culture, art, science. Credit for this question goes to Seth Metsch (http://www.SethDMC.com) who proposed it following a good discussion over the future of TV online.

My routine online reading has narrowed somewhat precipitously to Tumblr, Techmeme, Hacker News and HuffPo. Would love to find out what folks are reading daily or at least frequently (minimum once a week) online across categories: tech, politics, culture, art, science. Credit for this question goes to Seth Metsch (http://www.SethDMC.com) who proposed it following a good discussion over the future of TV online.

I am often surprised by how many people know what they want and yet fail to ask for it at the crucial moment (or for that matter altogether). This occurs in many different contexts. Sales people who can’t close because they don’t ask for the order. Employees who are unhappy with their role or compensation yet never ask for it to change. Business partnerships that are forever stuck at the negotiating phase. This is a recipe for slow failure which is the worst kind of failure. I am not suggesti...

I am often surprised by how many people know what they want and yet fail to ask for it at the crucial moment (or for that matter altogether). This occurs in many different contexts. Sales people who can’t close because they don’t ask for the order. Employees who are unhappy with their role or compensation yet never ask for it to change. Business partnerships that are forever stuck at the negotiating phase. This is a recipe for slow failure which is the worst kind of failure. I am not suggesti...