Continuations

Went to see Horton Hears a Who with the kids, who had a blast. Afterwards we talked about things that you can’t see, can’t hear, can’t smell and yet exist (despite the kangaroo’s insistence to the contrary). This was great fun with the conversation ranging from bacteria to magnetic fields. But we did not touch on something even more profound simply because it is too abstract for the kids (and as I have come to realize, for most adults too): probability. We live in a world in which randomness ...

Following up to yesterday’s post about randomness, Excel provides a very easy tool for modeling probability. Just insert =RAND() into a cell. This will generate a new (pseudo) random number between 0 and 1 each time the spreadsheet is recalculated. For most business modeling one wants to have a discrete distribution of values with a subjective probability distribution. For instance, in projecting out the cap table of a company one might have three possible valuations for the next round – low,...

I believe an important factor in the Fed’s decision to help JP Morgan shore up Bear Stearns is the size of Bear’s prime brokerage business. A lot of hedge funds depend on Bear to support parts or all of their trading through clearing and custodial services and lending. While I am sure that some of them have already made contingency plans or migrated away, there would still have been a huge and unpredictable ripple effect as hedge funds might have been forced to unwind positions or been cut of...

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with someone who is graduating from B-school and wanted some advice on what to look for in a startup – “a great team or a killer product”? The obvious answer is both, but then again it’s better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick. But what if it’s either one or the other? There is now way to decide without a lot of qualifications. First, “killer product” is not a meaningful concept unless it describes actual traction in the marketplace. If the...

Spent hours last night with the video from Clickable’s listening lab. Wish I would have been there for the immediacy but even so it is truly amazing how much one can learn by listening to customers. The first key is not to ask leading questions an not to ask the customer to perform specific tasks but to sit back and let them use the system as they normally would. That involves really putting the customer at ease and only gently reminding them to vocalize their thoughts should they fall silent...

I am very excited because Bug Labs is about to start shipping its first units. I can’t wait to get my hands on the actual device! Peter has been a friend for many years and it’s been great fun to see his vision go from woodblocks to prototype to functional device. Apparently Peter’s presentation drew “squeals of glee” from the audience at SXSW which is well deserved not just for what the unit can do but also for the hurdles overcome along the way. I have a list of things I want to build alrea...

I was not a fan of Eliot Spitzer’s tactics as AG. Instead of the slow grind of building cases, he frequently used threats and intimidation. I was not surprised that this approach backfired in Albany and there was a hint of self-destructivenes. But his cataclysmic fall yesterday is still stunning. I can’t help but think that one of his previous targets paid a PI to trail Spitzer and handed this to the Feds on a silver platter.

My partner Brad has a great post with that title over at the Union Square Ventures site announcing the closing of our new fund.

On the weekend, the NY Times ran an article on doping in academia. I find the current obsession with doping (including the seemingly endless steroids in baseball investigation) amusing. Not that I condone breaking laws or suggest that we should let folks who break laws off the hook – it’s simply that much of the moral outrage that accompanies these discussions seems misplaced. Most of us would appear “doped” to an athlete from say 100 years ago. Are vitamin supplements just better nutrition o...

I have played around with the iPhone SDK and Apple has done an amazing job. For starters, the documentation is impressive in both quantity and quality, including a series of introductory videos (quite the contrast with the scarcity of API documentation when the Facebook API first became available). The SDK provides access to most but not all of the nifty features of the iPhone, including the camera, accelerometer and of course the gestures on the touch screen (dock access and bluetooth are no...