Category: Things I Like
Suddenly the VC/entrepreneur meme for Q1-2011 is “The Quora for X.” Here are two examples from the past few days:
- Google Ventures Leads $600K Investment In LawPivot, A Quora For Startup Legal Advice
- Hipster Is Quora Plus Location – Or Q&A For Where You Are
Lest you think this is a TechCrunch phenomenon, I’ve received a half dozen emails in the last week pitching companies as “Quora for X” or some derivative of this (often “The Quora for X”). Of course, Joshua Schachter very cleverly suggested last night via Twitter that we create the “Quora for XXX“. Given the presence of PornoTube and YouPorn in our universe, I expect some clever porn purveyor will quickly figure this one out.
This meme goes around regularly. Here are a few built off of success cases (which bodes well for Quora if you view meme development as a leading indicator of success. “The Youtube for X”, “The Facebook for X”, “The MySpace for X” (oops), “The Google for X”, “The Twitter for X”, “The LinkedIn for X”, “The Groupon for X”, “The FourSquare for X”, and “The Zynga for X.”
You’ll probably infer that “X” in each case is a specific (often tightly defined) vertical market. Each of the companies listed above are arguably several of the very few companies that have actually established enough critical mass of users to declare themselves a true platform. The “X’s” presume that specialization in a vertical market will result in unique functionality that the general platform can’t create.
Ironically, this thought process runs directly counter to another massively overused entrepreneurial meme – “I’m creating a platform for X.” Think about it for a sec – are you creating a derivative of a platform that is vertically focused or is the vertically focused derivative of a platform that you are creating going to also be a platform?
Now, step back and think about how many huge companies have been created using “The BigSuccessfulStartupNowPlatform for X” approach? While modest companies emerge out of this (and there’s nothing wrong with that), there aren’t very many really significant companies that emerge. The platforms – if they are real platforms – usually either extend into the vertical segments nicely or quickly acquire “The BSSNP for X”.
As an investor, I’m not really interested in any of the verticals that are derivatives of platforms. Other than a few specific cases, where we actually believe a platform company can be created, we stay away from vertical markets. And often, the driver of the decision is the entrepreneur and his obsession with and experience in the particular vertical market in question.
I expect that we’ll see many “Quora’s for X” get created and talked about in the next quarter. If I was an investor in Quora, I’d be encouraging the team to be focused on expanding quickly into every vertical that appears which seems like it would be easy given their existing infrastructure. And if I was an entrepreneur, I’d already be looking past “The Quora for X” meme for what’s going to be next.
I nominate “platform” for overused tech word of 2010. Yeah, I whined about this a few months ago in my post Your Platform Is Not In My Space.
I hear the word “platform” in over 50% of the short pitches I get. A friend of mine who is working on a new startup that isn’t even funded yet (and he’s grinding on the financing) described his goal of “creating a platform for a-phrase-that-only-73-early-adopters-will-userstand.) Entrepreneurs everywhere describe the first release of their MVP (“minimum viable product” – for those of you that haven’t intersected with the Lean Startup movement) app as a “platform”. The first three pages of a google search on “platform” are 33% tech, 33% politics, and 34% other. At least Google image search is more accurate, for example:
Ahem – give me a fucking break. Yup – I get it – it’s great to be a platform. I give you Facebook and Twitter as examples. But real platforms are few and far between. And creating “a platform” is not necessarily the right first move for your brand new consumer facing application. Why don’t you start by being super useful to a bunch of consumers first.
I know I’ve been overusing the word “platform” lately – it’s like a weird brain infection that is hard to diagnose and then eliminate. I’ve found it – now it’s time to remove it from my vocabulary.
I’ve been quiet since the weekend. It’s not because I’ve had nothing to say (that would be a first), but because I was absolutely slaughtered by the flu. I spent all of Sunday and Monday in bed. I managed to work yesterday and stay on top of the things flying around and today was more or less normal (with a long afternoon nap). But that was easily the worst kick in the ass I’ve had from a cold in many years.
I’d put together a string of three weeks of six days of running a week prior to getting sick so there’s some chance that I was a little fatigued from that, but I generally felt great after my week off the grid for my 45th birthday. I’ve gone pretty hardcore on food / diet as a result of reading Younger Next Year so my body might have been a little confused by that. Or maybe I just shouldn’t have spent so much time next to my partner Ryan after he was recovering from the flu.
Regardless of what it was, I don’t wish that one on any of you. Maybe this is the year to get a flu shot if you haven’t already.
Wow – I had a deeply awesome week off the grid. I really really really needed a break. I had a magnificent birthday (thanks Amy and everyone who came and hung out), ran for 10 days straight (including Thanksgiving – boy does it feel awesome to be running again), and finally got enough rest to feel normal again (or at least as normal as I ever feel.)
As with most birthdays, I spent a lot of time reflecting on turning 45. I’ll toss out some posts about this in a bit, but one thing I realized was that I haven’t been going as deep as I’d like on specific technologies recently. We had a Foundry Group offsite the past two days and discussed the idea of more “nourishment of our inner nerds” and I’ve decided to try something new.
Each month I’ll pick a “tech theme” and explore it deeply. Some of these will be practical (e.g. stuff I want to implement now) while others will be less so (e.g. stuff I want to learn more about in the context of the investing I’m doing.)
The theme for this month is videoconferencing. This is one of those technologies that has been a “it will happen next year” thing for a long time (15 years)? I remember trying CU-SeeMe in 1995 to try to deal with (unsuccessfully) my east coast / west coast travel. Over the years I’ve bought and tried numerous dedicated video conferencing solutions. Until recently, it didn’t feel like it was quite there.
Skype was a huge breakthrough for me in the past two years. I’ve used it regularly and have found it incredibly effective for one on one video conferencing. But I need something more robust for “board level” video conferencing, especially multiperson.
It feels like all the pieces are finally here. So – I’m going to figure it out and put some money against it as part of my December 2010 tech theme.
If you have suggestions, experiences, or configurations that work for you, I’m all ears (and eyes).
My mom (Cecelia Feld) has had a huge positive impact on my life in many ways. I like to think that I’ve also had a huge positive impact on her life, although I’m sure there have been times that she wanted to hide in a closet from me and scream at the top of her lungs.
Cecelia is an amazing artist who has worked at her craft her entire adult life. As kids, my brother Daniel and I understood that between 9am and 5pm “mom was working in her studio” and was not to be bothered. Among other things, I learned the notion of focused, passionate discipline from her, but I also figured out how to keep myself entertained until she was done working for the day.
One thing that I’ve pestered her endlessly about is being a more shameless salesperson for her art. So, it’s with much pride that I see her now doing her “art pick of the month” where she’s selling one of her pieces for 30% off and promoting it through her email list. I can’t get her to do a blog, so instead I’ll promote it here.
This piece is called (#984) Kimono Series #6 and is a collagraph monotype sized 22×30”. Cecelia did this in 2002 which makes me think of the chaos that was in my head as I continued to unwind the mess that was my world from the collapse of the Internet bubble. It lists for $950 so with the 30% November 2010 discount it’s only $665.
If you are an art lover and this piece appeals to you or you want to be added to Cecelia’s email list, send her an email. I’d love to be able to tell my mom “see – my blog is worthwhile – I sold a piece of your art through it.”
Terry Kawaja of Luma Partners created today’s hilarious XtraNormal to help us understand what is going on at ad:tech.
Over the past two weeks I’ve heard the word “contrarian” more times than I can count. Suddenly, to become a successful investor in any segment (angel, venture capital, public markets, debt markets) you have to be contrarian. The assertion that a “contrarian strategy” always wins seems to be in the air.
When I ask people what they mean by “contrarian”, I’m amazed at how often they define it as either as “actively investing” or “sitting on the sidelines.” Specifically, “there are too many people investing at this point – I’m going to take a contrarian approach and sit on the sidelines for a while.”
To me, contrarian means doing the opposite of everyone else. If everyone is buying, you are selling. If everyone is selling, you are buying. Our friends at Webster even give us an example:
“As an investor, he’s a contrarian, preferring to buy stocks when most people are selling.”
Now, to be fair, you can make the case that “not buying” when everyone else is buying is contrarian. But I have never thought about it that way. And, as the word contrarian enters the mainstream vernacular around entrepreneur / angel / VC land, I think it’s important to ponder what it really means, especially if the majority suddenly adopt a “contrarian strategy” which, by definition, ceases to be contrarian.
Do you remember the amazingly hilarious “We’re All Individuals” segment from Monty Python’s Life of Brian?
I had my first pain free run in five months. And I’m very happy right now.
In March, I hurt my back. This was my first real running injury since I started running marathons in 2003. I’ve had some ankle twists and some knee bruises from all the trail running I do, but nothing that kept me off my feet for more than a month. This time I lost five months ; the last time I tried to run was two months ago.
I didn’t get serious about figuring out what was going on until half way through July in Alaska when I realized I just wasn’t getting better. My pain on a daily basis never got below a three (on a 0 to 10 scale) and I often was in the six to eight range. If you saw we get up out of a seat in the last five months, you knew I had a lower back injury. The pain gradually settled at the very base of my spin in the middle of back – it was localized, but sharp and chronic.
So I stopped running completely, increased the amount I was swimming up to a couple of times a week, and started the process of getting professional help. My first big goal was to rule out something serious, so I decided to get an MRI. That took a while (doctor visit, referral, scheduling). I had two different doctors read the MRI – each told me that there was an issue, but there was no need for surgery and steroid injections would likely be useless. So, I started the “sign up for physical therapy process.”
In the mean time, my general practitioner gave me a prescription for vicodin. I’m very afraid of drugs and have always avoided them. I don’t remember if it was a movie I saw about drugs in elementary school (I saw movies on sex but never was afraid of it), my parents, or something else but they’ve just never been my thing. I am a Vitamin I users and I used it for a while to try to manage my chronic gout, but eventually gave up and went on Allopurinol. I’ve had other prescription medicines over the year, but I’ve stayed away from anything illegal, even our friendly herb which is basically legal in Boulder. So the idea of taking a narcotic sort of freaked me out.
I was in so much pain after the US Open (and sitting on the stadium seats for two days) that I went ahead and took one pill. The bottle said I could take four a day, so I figured one a day would help without being dangerous. Amy and I flew from New York to San Diego and I took a second one. On Friday I flew to San Francisco for the day and took a third one. When I woke up on Saturday morning I was pain free for the first time in five months. So I decided not to take another one on Saturday.
On Sunday when I was sitting at my computer I started to stand up and had an extremely loud “pop” happen exactly in the region where the pain has been. Amy heard it from across the room and immediately shouted out “are you ok.” My back then went into a spasm – something that’s only happened a few times – and for about ten seconds I couldn’t talk or breath. But, when it stopped, I still had no pain.
I flew back to Boulder Monday morning. I decided not to take any more vicodin until I had at least a pain level of three again. As the week passed, the pain didn’t reappear. On Wednesday I saw a spine specialist who works with athletes as part of the PT referral process. I spent 30 minutes telling him the story from beginning to end and then we went and looked at the MRI together. He again confirmed that surgery was unnecessary and – more importantly – that the MRI showed a few clear signs of distress that would explain the chronic pain, but that steroid injections would be useless. We did a few diagnostic things and then he gave me his hypothesis.
He suggested that it’s likely that the small amount of vicodin I took broke the pain cycle I had been stuck in. Once the pain was gone, my body was able to move in certain ways that resulted in a natural adjustment (the big pop) of an area of my back that was stuck. Having it adjust naturally was much more effective than if I’d gone to a chiropractor. It had never occurred to me that this would happen, but when I think about the number of times my back adjusts in other spots when it gets out of whack this made perfect sense to me.
I’ve now had a week of no back pain. I haven’t taken anything – not even Vitamin I – in a week. I went for a few swims this week and a short run today. I feel great.
For everyone out there that has been patient with me, offered suggestions, and provided help over the past five months, thank you. Who knows whether this really solved the problem or not but this is the first time in a while that I’ve been optimistic about it.
Now that my Apple and Google experiments have been huge successes, I thought I’d try an Android phone one more time. I like my iPhone 4, but it’s pretty weak with all the Google apps. Specifically, I badly want better contact integration, clean email sync, and Google voice. Plus, AT&T still blows in Boulder.
Any suggestions out there for the “best Android out there today.” I was using a Sprint EVO for a while (and liked it a lot) until it was stolen by my assistant Kelly. So, I open to any choice – suggest away.