I don’t write about broadcast media much – it’s not my thing. I’ve definitely had my entertaining moments – including a very strange lunch at Blackrock with Mel Karmizan when he was the president of CBS pre-Viacom (“the Internet – it is irrelevant to us – you just can’t sell enough ads on it”) and a due diligence trip to a South Carolina radio station when I was at Ameridata in 1994 (“Maybe we should buy them and try to introduce computers into the radio business” – at least lunch was good). However, I do like 24 (I plan to be Jack Bauer in my next life) and I thought last week’s West Wing was superb.
My trip home from the airport coincided with NPR so I listened to an hour of it. Near the end, Bob Garfield had a fun piece titled An Impending Period of Transitional Chaos for Media. He started out with the hypothesis – What if network broadcast media simply disappeared? What if TV as we know it was replaced by something really cool (cut to the theme from The Jetsons). Over the air network is gone, affiliates are gone, satellite radio is a 4 billion dollar eight track tape player pushed aside by free podcasting. What if the old model collapsed before the new model was ready?
Now, I always find it mildly entertaining when mainstream media (e.g. NPR) talks about its impending demise (it feels so self indulgent in a sick, twisted way), but Garfield deeply believes disruption on a mass scale is coming. He leads with the quote “I truly believe … that today’s marketing model is broken” by Jim Stengel, Global Marketing Officer of P&G telling ad agencies that network TV isn’t giving advertisers its money’s worth (and P&G – the biggest advertiser in the world – spends $5.5 billion per year on advertising). Then – the facts:
Ok – so now that broadcast media is going to die – he goes on to talk about vLogs and how mass media will be overthrown by micromedia. Then – cut to the ubiquitous Jeff Jarvis for a sound bite on the public flogging of Tucker Carlson by Jon Stewart (400k viewers on CNN, 5m viewers on the Internet) and pithy quotes from Drazen Pantic at Unmediated.org about how chaos must ensue.
The last half of the broadcast loses some steam as it devolves into more lightweight banter about what’s going to happen, how it’s going to be a mess, how traditional media (e.g. CBS) thinks they must survive to uphold the American way, and how absurd that notion is. But – overall – in 10 minutes – I thought Garfield did a good job of explaining what’s going on in a way that my mom could relate to.
I’ll end with my favorite West Wing quote of all time – when Josh is struggling with the NASA Mars chick that we think he’s going to have a romantic interlude with (but doesn’t – damn) and Leo is annoyed that Josh is wasting time on stupid NASA Mars stuff. Leo turns to Josh and grumbles, “My generation never got the future it was promised… Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel’s exactly the same. We don’t even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.” Josh counters with “The personal computer,” but he can’t stop Leo who says “… Where’s my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?”
Having spent the last 17 hours (door to door) getting from Paris to Boulder, all I can say is my teleporter can’t be ready too soon.
There are an increasing number of high profile CTO bloggers appearing, including Adam Bosworth, Greg Papadopoulos, and Grady Booch. Two close friends and CTO’s / founders of companies that I’ve funded have recently started blogging. While they are not as high profile, they are intensely smart and articulate guys that have had a lot of success and a wide range of experiences. Plus, they know each other, like each other, and have plenty of dirt on me.
Todd Vernon is the CTO of Raindance. I was one of the seed investors of Raindance and on the board from inception until about two years after they went public. Todd and his partners Paul Berberian and Jim Lejeal (now CEO of Oxlo – another company we’ve funded) were the architects behind the business. I’ll always treasure the first time I heard Todd refer to a major technical thing as “full of chocolately goodness.”
Tim Wolters was the CTO of Dante Group, which was acquired in 2003 by webMethods. We were first round investors in Dante and were pleasantly surprised when webMethods acquired the company six months later. Tim spent the last 15 months at webMethods insuring that the Dante technology and products were successfully integrated into webMethods and recently left to start working on his next big idea. Tim just put up a post describing his desire to blog about the process of creating his new company – if you are an entrepreneur, it’s bound to be filled with plenty of good stuff.
Welcome guys.
Jason Calacanis just forwarded me a fun post he just put up titled Sparring with VCs & Associates to sharpen your skills. While not all VCs are as clueless as the dmf that it appears Jason talked to, I’ve had plenty of conversations that resemble this one (where I’m on the receiving end – substitute “Brad” for “Me”) during “due diligence” calls with other VCs that are interested in companies I’m either looking at or already an investor in.
Someone (I can’t remember who – maybe my dad?) told me a long time ago that “the question is much more important than the answer.” While this probably fits in “the journey is the reward” cliche category, Jason’s dialogue points this out in spades.
I recently made an angel investment in Jonathan Weber’s (the former editor of The Industry Standard) new publishing venture – New West Network. I got turned on to Jonathan by Jerry Colonna who knew Jonathan well from the publishing business. New West isn’t a “venture deal”, so we chose not to fund it as a venture firm, but I like to support interesting projects that impact my community and New West definitely fit the bill as it’s a network of online communities devoted to the culture, economy, politics, environment, and overall atmosphere of the Rocky Mountain West, and currently includes specific sites for Missoula, Boulder, Salt Lake City, and Northern Idaho.
Jonathan’s having his Boulder launch party at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art on 4/14 from 6pm – 10pm (and – Amy and I are trustees of BMOCA – so yes – we helped get a good rate for the evening). If you are in town, come join us, enjoy BMOCA, listen to music from The Indulgers and The Ash Ganley Duo, and eat good Boulder food from New West’s event sponsors – Rhumba, Zolo Grill, Avery Brewery, Jax Fish House, West End Tavern, and booze from Superior Liquor. And yes – it’s Boulder – so there will be prizes.
NewsGator recently announced a broad European partnership with VNU. The first fruit of their labors went live today – the French VNU / NewsGator RSS reader. Coincidentally, I had breakfast with Dominique Busso who is in charge of this effort for VNU. Not surprisingly, Dominique is friends with Loic Le Muir at Six Apart and has embraced Typepad as part of their infrastructure, including the very clever nanopublishing effort called VNUNet Blogs. While I can’t understand much of the French on the blogs, it’s pretty impressive to see a mainstream publisher like VNU so aggressively embracing RSS, blogging, and nanopublishing.
I’ve had many great meals in my life, but only a few that I’ll remember forever such as my first dinner at Tommy Toy’s (San Francisco) with Len Fassler or the first time Amy and went to Biba (Boston – now gone) together.
Last night’s dinner at Le Cinq was legendary. I don’t drink, so I’m usually ready to leave any meal (or party) after two hours and one minute, but I hung in for every delightful minute of last night’s five hour extravaganza. We went with our friends – entrepreneurs Jeff Behrens and Lori Rutter (“The Jeff’s” – that was for Lori’s benefit) and their friend Nicolas Paulmier, a partner at Cinven, a large European private equity group.
Five hours, nine courses, five great friends, incredible restaurant staff, endless dessert, and a deep food coma afterwards. Following is the menu (which they printed individually for each of us to take home!) for those of you that want to enjoy it vicariously.
Mercredi 06 Mars 2005
Diner au Restaurant Le Cinq
Philippe Legendre, Chef des Cuisines, Meilleur Ouvrier de France
Blanc et noir aux ecrevisses pattes rouges
Salade de morilles a l’araignee de mer et au vin jaune
Grosses asperges vertes au Parmesan et a la truffe, polenta et olives noires confites
Turbot de ligne au melon d’eau, nage aux epices et au citron vert
Langouste puce aux petits pois et aux oignons doux des Cevennes
Bar de ligne roti aux epices et aux artichauts poivrade
Le selection de nos Maitres fromagers
Granite d’ananas a l’hibiscus et parfum de litchi, emulsion coco
Du chocolat exclusivement …
Eric Beaumard, Directeur du Restaurant
or – in English – according to Babelfish
Wednesday 06 Mars 2005
Dinner at the Restaurant Five
Philippe Legendre, Chief of the Kitchens, Better Working of France
White and black with the ecrevisses red legs morel
Salade have the araignee sea and with the yellow wine
Grosses green asparaguses with the Parmesan and have truffle, polenta and crystallized black olives
Turbot of line to watermelon, swim with the epices and with the green lemon
Langouste chip with peas and soft onions of Cevennes
Bar of line roti to the epices and the artichokes poivrade
The selection of our Maitres Granite Cheesemongers
Pineapple has the hibiscus and perfume of litchi, emulsion coconut
Of the chocolate exclusively…
Eric Beaumard, Director of the Restaurant
I’m in Paris again this week spending time with Amy. She’s basically stopped talking English, so I don’t understand anything she says to me anymore, which – while we have a fantastic relationship – also seems to work pretty well and is probably not that different from most male / female relationships.
Unlike my last trip when I did my Q1 vacation, I’ve been working this week. Last night we had drinks with Loic Le Meur, the Executive VP of Six Apart Europe. Loic took us out to the Hotel Costes bar at 239 rue Saint Honore which is a place that easily exceeds my “hip factor.” Loic was a gentleman, didn’t flirt with Amy too much (my core fear of interacting with any French man while in the presence of my wife), and we ate some good snacks together (which you must do when you have drinks at 7 followed by dinner at 9 somewhere else.)
Loic’s doing a great job with Six Apart in Europe, as they’ve already got many of the key portals as partners. Loic’s got a major clue and it was great to catch up with him on what’s happening with RSS and blogging in Europe. We discovered that we are both investors in Technorati (he’s an angel investor), I filled him in on Feedburner and NewsGator, and we talked about his upcoming European Internet 2.0 Les Blogs conference (that I can’t come to because of a couple of pre-existing board meetings, but I’ll likely send Amy as my delegate since it’s being held in the French Senate.)
We finished the evening off with a three hour dinner with some friends from Boston who happen to be bouncing around Paris. Waking up this morning was difficult, but I smiled when I checked my email and had an onslaught of requests for the Buffett Letters.
I received a number of requests for copies of The Buffett Letters as a result of my recent post. I now have emailable copies of them – if you’d like them, simply send me an email request. The email I have came with the following request:
“Now, the important part. These letters are not our property. Mr. Buffett wrote them to his business partners, not to the general public. But they are of great interest, and Mr. Buffett has let it be known that he has no objection to people passing them around like this, but does not care for the idea of them being posted in a public forum. Please honor his wishes. PLEASE DO NOT POST THESE LETTERS, AND PLEASE BE SURE TO INCLUDE THIS PARAGRAPH WHEN SHARING. Thank you.”
So – please honor this.
I also have several great Charlie Munger speeches that have no such disclaimer, although I will treat them the same way. If you want them, just ask.
Dick Costolo, the CEO of Feedburner, announced yesterday that we led their financing and that I have joined their board.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that read my original Why Did We Invest in NewsGator post or my What do my blog stats really mean post. I first hooked up with Dick Costolo and the Feedburner crew on May 8, 2004 shortly after I started blogging (on May 4, 2004) due to a heads up from Fred Wilson that I should use Feedburner to publish my RSS feed. I’ve been waiting patiently ever since to have the opportunity to invest in Feedburner.
When I dug in and started trying to understand RSS and blogging in the spring of 2004, I identified eight segments that I believed existed: Content Management Systems (CMS), Aggregators (Readers), Tools, Hosting, Content, Search, Analytics, and Advertising. I used this as the framework for both exploring the impact of RSS and identifying companies that I might be interested in investing in. My framework has evolved in the past year, especially once I realized that my technical analogy for how RSS evolved was going to be similar (but not equivalent) to how SMTP evolved. I was a very successful investor in email-related technologies (and continue to enjoy being an investor in two successful email-related companies – Return Path and Postini), but also learned some “interesting” lessons about how quickly the dynamics could change as I had a huge financial win at one point in the “email direct marketing segment” with a company called MessageMedia that ultimately got slaughtered (more on that some other day).
Our investments in NewsGator and Technorati covered a lot of the interesting territory for us. However, analytics was an important segment that neither NewsGator or Technorati touched (although both have huge amounts of interesting data – they just weren’t focused on the publisher-side for analytics). While Technorati – as a search engine – has an advertising component to its revenue model, it didn’t address feed-oriented advertising, nor did it address any of the publisher-side complexity associated with feed management and distribution. While publishers benefit from both NewsGator’s and Technorati’s services (and are customers of each company), we saw a wide open opportunity to help publishers with all of their syndication management, advertising, and analytics opportunities – hence Feedburner.
Dick is far more articulate about this then I am, so I recommend reading what he wrote about Feedburner’s Business Model in his post about the financing. Dick – as a good entrepreneur – built a great syndicate around his financing. DFJ (co-investors with us in Technorati) – are investors, as is Sutter Hill (our co-investors in Return Path – Greg Sands, who I’ve worked with closely at Return Path, will be a big help for us at Feedburner.)
While we’ve missed investing in a few of the segments, most notably CMS’s (and Six Apart is undoubtedly the best emerging company in this arena, especially as the free stuff is already owned by Google/Blogger, Microsoft/Spaces, and Yahoo/360), there are a few new problems (and possibly segments) that have emerged, especially as you start to think about the second-order effects of RSS (now that the first-order effects are over a year old and in our face every day).
If you blog but don’t currently use Feedburner to publish your feed, try it. I promise you’ll like it. Oh – and try NewsGator and Technorati also (my homage to Warren Buffett, master of promoting his own companies – drink a Diet Coke while you are at it).