MultiplicationShooter1.0: I am a huge fan of MIT’s Scratch project. It is a visual programming environment for kids. Instead of writing code in a text editor, kids snap together templates to form scripts. The scripts are attached to sprites. Creating sprites is also super easy in the integrated graphics editor. Another wonderful thing about Scratch is that with the push of a button you can publish your project to the Web (where it runs as a Java Applet). My kids have created many projects wit...

MultiplicationShooter1.0: I am a huge fan of MIT’s Scratch project. It is a visual programming environment for kids. Instead of writing code in a text editor, kids snap together templates to form scripts. The scripts are attached to sprites. Creating sprites is also super easy in the integrated graphics editor. Another wonderful thing about Scratch is that with the push of a button you can publish your project to the Web (where it runs as a Java Applet). My kids have created many projects wit...

When I started this blog, I picked the name continuations. But at the time, continuations.com was not available and so I used a subdomain at wenger.us. I am happy to report that thanks to the capable negotiating help of Eric Friedman, I am now the proud owner of continuations.com. Old links should still work as I am forwarding requests.

When I started this blog, I picked the name continuations. But at the time, continuations.com was not available and so I used a subdomain at wenger.us. I am happy to report that thanks to the capable negotiating help of Eric Friedman, I am now the proud owner of continuations.com. Old links should still work as I am forwarding requests.

The Sequoia “RIP: Good Times” presentation: Super clear presentation about how we got ourselves into this mess and why it will take a long time to get back on track. Must reading for everyone (not just entrepreneurs).

The Sequoia “RIP: Good Times” presentation: Super clear presentation about how we got ourselves into this mess and why it will take a long time to get back on track. Must reading for everyone (not just entrepreneurs).

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...