We had our annual portfolio summit yesterday. Lots of great discussion around a broad range of topics. One that was especially interesting was whether or not a ‘headless’ web service can be successful. By 'headless’ I mean a web service that is all backend and does not have its own frontend. Such a service would rely on third parties to build frontends for it. One argument against this approach was that it would put the service at the mercy of other developers who might never create a co...

We had our annual portfolio summit yesterday. Lots of great discussion around a broad range of topics. One that was especially interesting was whether or not a ‘headless’ web service can be successful. By 'headless’ I mean a web service that is all backend and does not have its own frontend. Such a service would rely on third parties to build frontends for it. One argument against this approach was that it would put the service at the mercy of other developers who might never create a co...

The NYT Sunday magazine had a great cover story about Kleiner’s Greentech push (link to be added). Amidst all the news of financial meltdown and impending recession, it was heartening to see that we may yet witness the commercialization of technologies to help us fight the damage we have been doing to the environment. A firm of Kleiner’s reach and reputation taking a high profile lead will result in many more dollars being invested. For starters, other VC firms want to be in Kleiner deals, ma...

The NYT Sunday magazine had a great cover story about Kleiner’s Greentech push (link to be added). Amidst all the news of financial meltdown and impending recession, it was heartening to see that we may yet witness the commercialization of technologies to help us fight the damage we have been doing to the environment. A firm of Kleiner’s reach and reputation taking a high profile lead will result in many more dollars being invested. For starters, other VC firms want to be in Kleiner deals, ma...

I used to not be a big fan of frameworks such as Rails (Ruby), Django (Python) or Cake (PHP) for two major reasons. First, the frameworks did not seem all that mature requiring attention to patches and upgrades and raising at least the possibility of winding up on a “dead” branch. Second, the frameworks seemed to add a lot of overhead (e.g., in the ORM parts) so that you would need more hardware and were less able to handle traffic spikes. But I am slowly coming around to a different view. Th...

I used to not be a big fan of frameworks such as Rails (Ruby), Django (Python) or Cake (PHP) for two major reasons. First, the frameworks did not seem all that mature requiring attention to patches and upgrades and raising at least the possibility of winding up on a “dead” branch. Second, the frameworks seemed to add a lot of overhead (e.g., in the ORM parts) so that you would need more hardware and were less able to handle traffic spikes. But I am slowly coming around to a different view. Th...

Today we are having our annual portfolio company summit. We bring together folks from all our investments for a day in New York City. It is an awesome opportunity for all of us to learn from each other. Given our strong focus, almost all of the companies face similar issues. For instance every one needs to worry about SEO. But we also have enough breadth to have real experts on every topic. Wondering what your iPhone strategy should be? Talk to the folks from Pinch Media. Curious about what i...

Today we are having our annual portfolio company summit. We bring together folks from all our investments for a day in New York City. It is an awesome opportunity for all of us to learn from each other. Given our strong focus, almost all of the companies face similar issues. For instance every one needs to worry about SEO. But we also have enough breadth to have real experts on every topic. Wondering what your iPhone strategy should be? Talk to the folks from Pinch Media. Curious about what i...

There have been a lot of great posts this week about what the financial crisis means for startups. There was Jason Calacanis’s epic Startup Depression and Fred’s thoughts on it, Brad Feld’s Focus on Things Under Your Control and Roger Ehrenberg’s somewhat dissenting view that there is a new group of angels that might not pull back. I attended several conferences and panels this week and was asked the question about how this influences startups and startup investors at everyone of them. If you...

There have been a lot of great posts this week about what the financial crisis means for startups. There was Jason Calacanis’s epic Startup Depression and Fred’s thoughts on it, Brad Feld’s Focus on Things Under Your Control and Roger Ehrenberg’s somewhat dissenting view that there is a new group of angels that might not pull back. I attended several conferences and panels this week and was asked the question about how this influences startups and startup investors at everyone of them. If you...

The current situation in the financial markets is not just scary but also confusing. It doesn’t help that people are talking and writing in ways that further confuse the matter. First, I will try to provide clarity around some terms that people have been abusing. Growth and recession are “real” concepts, which means they can best be thought of as quantities. In a recession the economy is producing less stuff. Inflation and deflation on the other hand are “nominal” concepts, which means they c...

The current situation in the financial markets is not just scary but also confusing. It doesn’t help that people are talking and writing in ways that further confuse the matter. First, I will try to provide clarity around some terms that people have been abusing. Growth and recession are “real” concepts, which means they can best be thought of as quantities. In a recession the economy is producing less stuff. Inflation and deflation on the other hand are “nominal” concepts, which means they c...

I have been meaning to post about principles of cloud computing, but what is going on in the financial world and in Washington is simply too crazy. On a day where we had by far the largest bank failure in US history (WaMu seized by regulators and sold to JPMorgan) we were treated to an absurd political spectacle. Lawmakers convened at the White House to seal a deal on the bailout only to see it torpedoed by a group of Republicans. It may be hard, if not impossible to ever find out who knew wh...

I have been meaning to post about principles of cloud computing, but what is going on in the financial world and in Washington is simply too crazy. On a day where we had by far the largest bank failure in US history (WaMu seized by regulators and sold to JPMorgan) we were treated to an absurd political spectacle. Lawmakers convened at the White House to seal a deal on the bailout only to see it torpedoed by a group of Republicans. It may be hard, if not impossible to ever find out who knew wh...

I bought GOOG at the IPO and have owned it since. I simply did not but nearly enough of it. Now I believe all of us who made that mistake will get another shot at buying into GOOG at a reasonable price (that is assuming you have some cash around). I am not suggesting anyone go all in right now, but I have started to buy and will continue to do so over the coming months. I also think that EBAY is a buy at current prices. They have a lot of cash which is something in short supply these days. A ...

I bought GOOG at the IPO and have owned it since. I simply did not but nearly enough of it. Now I believe all of us who made that mistake will get another shot at buying into GOOG at a reasonable price (that is assuming you have some cash around). I am not suggesting anyone go all in right now, but I have started to buy and will continue to do so over the coming months. I also think that EBAY is a buy at current prices. They have a lot of cash which is something in short supply these days. A ...

I want to get one thing out of the way right upfront. It is possible to scale the LAMP stack to hundreds of millions of page views per month and beyond. But that largely involves unnatural acts. By that I mean developing lots of custom backend code that has no visible value to an enduser of the site or service. My third principle of cloud computing is that code scales under normal circumstances without unnatural acts. In the ideal cloud scenario you can take a Ruby on Rails or Django app, dro...

I want to get one thing out of the way right upfront. It is possible to scale the LAMP stack to hundreds of millions of page views per month and beyond. But that largely involves unnatural acts. By that I mean developing lots of custom backend code that has no visible value to an enduser of the site or service. My third principle of cloud computing is that code scales under normal circumstances without unnatural acts. In the ideal cloud scenario you can take a Ruby on Rails or Django app, dro...

At present, the LAMP stack and most other stacks come with a ton of different dials and switches. For my talk at Web 2.0 Expo I pulled together a slide with just excerpts from configuration files and rapidly filled a screen with lots of arcana from httpd.conf to php.ini (and that’s before you get to the db, firewall, loadbalancer, etc). It is true that you can (sometimes) get a working system just with default config files, but that will be neither secure nor performant. If you want either or...

At present, the LAMP stack and most other stacks come with a ton of different dials and switches. For my talk at Web 2.0 Expo I pulled together a slide with just excerpts from configuration files and rapidly filled a screen with lots of arcana from httpd.conf to php.ini (and that’s before you get to the db, firewall, loadbalancer, etc). It is true that you can (sometimes) get a working system just with default config files, but that will be neither secure nor performant. If you want either or...