Scott Converse has an extensive post about his second board meeting. I’m a couple of months into my investment in ClickCaster and I’m very pleased with the progress Scott and crew have made. I’m particularly happy with how effectively Scott listens, processes feedback, and acts on it.
Nick Bradbury just released FeedDemon 2.1. It’s spectacular. I continue to use as many different newsreaders as I can get my hands on – FeedDemon is far and away the best for anyone with a large number (> 100) of feeds being monitored. Nick has plenty of details on his blog, but some of the new features include:
There are plenty more, especially for a x.1 release. Attention, search, and security – look for a lot more of this across NewsGator’s products.
When IE 7 and Firefox 2 came out, they both added a lot of RSS-related functionality. As part of this, they both implemented their version of “smart landing” pages for when a user clicks on an RSS feed link. While this is a nice idea, it broke cardinal rule number one of being “publisher friendly” – they both override any custom landing pages that a publisher (e.g. me – my blog) has put together.
Since I use FeedBurner to publish my feed, I’m used to all the nifty landing page features they provide. FeedBurner – through their “Browser Friendly” service, has always provided plenty of options for my RSS landing page. Suddenly – any IE 7 or Firefox 2 user no longer got “my” landing page.
FeedBurner solved this today with an upgrade to their Browser Friendly service. They’ll let you have it any way you want – browser native format, raw XML, or FeedBurner formatted landing page.
Many companies strive to be TechCrunched (I got an email this morning asking me to introduce someone to TechCrunch and GigaOm – as if that would have any real impact.) If you’re a nerd, however, you want to be Ajaxianed. Ajaxian – who’s goal is to “generate more hype than Rails” has a nice showcase article up on Me.dium along with some invite codes. It’s a very good explanation of what Me.dium is trying to do and why it matters, along with some techy stuff.
In August, I talked about a new feature that FeedBurner had created called “Networks”. As part of this, I set up one of the first FeedBurner Networks – the Venture Capital Network. It’s been really cool to watch how the network has evolved and grown – it now has 52 VC bloggers with a daily reach of 114k subscribers across the network. FeedBurner has continued to roll new features into the network, including a detailed network landing page, ability to subscribe to the entire network or simply feeds in the network, and an OPML link for the network. Look for more fun stuff soon.
As a result of playing around with my Dynamics of Information theme, I decided to create a few more networks. The first one that I’m rolling out is the Colorado Entrepreneurs and Technology network as I want to try to understand if “source geography” (where the publishers are located, vs. where the subscribers are located) has any value. I’ve invited a bunch of Colorado entrepreneurs and tech bloggers – if you want to join this network, are an entrepreneur or tech blogger living in Colorado, and didn’t get an invite, email me a request. Of course, if you are interested in bloggers that are entrepreneurs or tech dudes in Colorado, check out the network.
I’ve invested in over 50 angel deals in the past 12 years. Several have been big winners for me, a few have done ok, and some have failed. Many are still active – including several that I did before I started making venture capital investments in 1996.
Recently – a company I invested in 11 years ago – Harmonix Music Systems – was acquired by Viacom / MTV for $175 million. The deal closed last week and the money has been flowing to the Harmonix shareholders. And – it’s plenty – as Harmonix only raised $10 million over the life of the company. The reactions from a few of the angels I helped recruit to the deal included “incredible outcome – I had forgotten I had shares in the company”, “Brad, are you sure you got the decimal point in the right place”, and simply “holy shit.”
I’m extremely proud of Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos – the co-founders of Harmonix. Eran is a fraternity brother of mine – although he was more than four years younger than me so we never lived together. Eran remembers approaching me when I was a judge for the MIT $10K competition the year that they entered – Eran recognized my name from our frat and after thinking “Hey – I know of that guy” approached me about getting together. I remember the first time we hung out together and got a really crappy meal in Central Square in Cambridge at one of the omnipresent Indian places. Eran and Alex regaled me of tales of the vision they had for creating musical environments and games for non-musicians. They were incredibility creative, passionate, and infectious about their ideas.
I helped put together an angel round in 1995 for them. It was modest – I think it was a total of about $500k. Over the next few years, they did a couple of small financings – although none of them from traditional VCs – and raised around $10m. Eran, Alex, and team regularly created new products, got key distribution deals with major players, and chipped away at building a business. They sent out an investor letter periodically updating everyone one what was happening. Occasionally I’d get a call from one of the angels that was in the round asking how things were going. Time passed.
In 2005, they released their newest product – Guitar Hero. It was a monster hit. Suddenly, Harmonix went from a sleeply little company that had been ambling along for a decade to a hot up and comer. MTV swooped in and grabbed the shiny nugget just as the Guitar Hero franchise was picking up speed (if you loved Guitar Hero, then check out Guitar Hero 2) – it’s a perfect fit for Viacom / MTV’s latest new media push and their demographic.
I expect to see great things from Eran, Alex, Harmonix, and MTV over the next few years. Congrats guys and nicely done!
Earlier this week Intel announced Suite Two – an appliance that integrates NewsGator’s Enterprise Server product with SixApart’s Movable Type, SocialText’s wiki, and SimpleFeed corporate feed management. The products are being integrated by SpikeSource who will also handle maintenance and support. Another step in NewsGator’s “buy and deploy our RSS aggregator products however you – the customer – wants” strategy.
Charlie Wood wrote up a quick anecdote about how he quickly integrated his Spanning Salesforce and Spanning Feed Builder products with Salesforce.com and NewsGator’s Enterprise Server to help a marcomm manager to send updates about her company’s marketing events from Salesforce.com direct to her executives BlackBerries. The company is already using Salesforce.com and NewsGator Enterprise Server – Charlie’s glue connected the pieces together and got things up an running in 30 minutes. Very neat.
Finally, if you are a NewsGator customer (consumer or enterprise) and you are bored of your existing screen saver, take a look at the NewsGator Screen Saver. I’ve had it running on my laptop for a couple of weeks and it’s one of those simple things that gets a “wow – cool!” reaction every time. Nick Harris – one of the NewsGator wizards – needed something to play around with to exercise the NewsGator REST API. Voila – screen saver. He’s also snuck in a few new things coming soon such as a new and improved location manager.
I love my two giant golden retrievers (Denali and Kenai). I’m definitely “a dog person” – I once had a cat named Tiny (who of course was huge) and when I got divorced from my first wife I offered to give her the left half or the right half (or the front, or the back – whatever she preferred.) While no animals were actually harmed in the divorce settlement, I’ve never had a cat since, although I’ve become more respectful of my cat friends and rarely pull their cats’ tails anymore. When Amy suggested we get a dog, I agreed as long as she was willing to take care of it. I don’t do vomit and shit very well, but these guys have definitely become two of my best friends.
So – when I had the chance to invest in Dogster, I did. Instinctively I understood the deep emotions that my dogs evoked in me and – based on Dogster’s traffic – I seemed to be on the “ambivalent” side of the equation. Besides – who wants to talk to other people – it’s way more fun to be part of a social network of dogs (or – if you prefer cats – Catster.)
Plenty of people have laughed at the company – often suggesting that Hamster is next up in the list of sites (I had a hamster – actually a guinea pig – once – it died while Amy was away and she made me put it in a tupperware container in the freezer so she could bury it when she got home from her trip.) I tried to explain how powerful the attraction of the site is a few times, but don’t try too hard because people either get it or they don’t. So – when my friend (and restaurant consultant) Laurie Aaronson told me that she’d become addicted to Catster, I encouraged her to “guest blog” about her experience.
I never thought that I’d have a blog, but after finding Caster, I have found my “inner blogger” in the form of a slightly portly kitty named Sammie. She likes to blog about her sedentary life as a house-cat. It’s been real fun, I’ve been surprised by the support of the Caster community and I’ve even found myself buying items on the site. Most importantly, Sammie was recently chosen as “Diary of the day” and because of her success, the search “Sammie Mendelson” now ranks first on Google Search! One question, though… Why can’t dogs and cats be friends? Dogster and Caster are mutual exclusive environments and while Sammie has made many feline friends, she’d like to branch out a bit.
Meow. Woof.
I was looking forward to getting up at 3:30am this morning and flying to Chicago for the FeedBurner board meeting. At 1am I woke up with the feeling that a bug had crawled into my ear and was gnawing on my eardrum. I suffered through the next few hours but at 3:30am decided I was unfit for getting out of bed and schlepping to the airport so I rolled over and slept some more.
I joined the FeedBurner board meeting by phone. By the time it was over, I felt well enough to head to New York at the end of the day. However, I missed the moment of truth at the board meeting when the board morphed into eight Dick Costolo’s.
That is just a scary sight. Matt Blumberg can really be an mischevious person sometimes.