Frankly Speaking

Depression Era Chic

2009-02-05T22:24:00.002-07:00

I've noticed the Depression Era Chic look pick up steam throughout the winter, and unfortunately, hasn't shown signs of slowing down anytime soon. This has no doubt contributed to the overall doom and gloom that currently persists. More here

W Hong Kong

2009-02-03T22:21:00.003-07:00

Anybody who knows me, knows a) I like to travel and b) I love staying at the W Hotel chain where ever I go. W Hong Kong opened up a few months ago, and from the looks of things, it seems fantastic. More here

Do You Think Anyone Will Notice?

2009-02-02T21:46:00.002-07:00

New look for a Kansas City library. More here

13thWitness - Great Photography

2009-01-31T18:21:00.001-07:00

Unbelievable photography. More here

I Wish I Were Joking

2009-01-31T17:40:00.004-07:00

"Another piece of legislation that has yet to be drafted involves the infamous Zion Curtain or glass partitions erected on restaurant lunch counters to separate diners at restaurants from bottles of booze."

- And, no, I did not make that quote up. New liquor laws in Utah.

Sinatara - Seduction

2009-01-29T20:51:00.004-07:00

Nothing really new from the Chairman on this one. But it's still Sinatra, how could you pass it up?

Buy it here.

Would love to listen to it on this.

New BBC Release

2009-01-27T21:19:00.002-07:00

More here

Bailouts! Get Your Bailouts!

2009-01-24T20:28:00.003-07:00

Via Vanity Fair

Perfect Match

2009-01-23T22:13:00.002-07:00

Imagine these with this.

More here

How Geeks Push Products

2009-01-22T22:36:00.000-07:00

I'm Just Sayin'...

2009-01-22T21:14:00.002-07:00

Buy it here

Update: Blackberry Stays

2009-01-21T21:24:00.004-07:00

In an update to my recent post about Barak Obama and his Blackberry, turns out the new president will get to use one:

Per ValleyWag:

But Obama, who has long insisted he'd find a way to keep his beloved device, from which he was inseparable on the campaign trail, found a way; the souped-up BlackBerry will soon arrive in his hands, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reports. And good on him! This is yet another example of Obama's forceful push for change.

Commander and Blackberry

2009-01-17T10:53:00.003-07:00

Really interesting article in the NY Times earlier this week about Barack Obama's obsession with his Blackberry. The article goes onto say that all the drama in the press mentioning how attached the future president is to his Blackberry could mean up to $50 Million in free advertising for device maker Research In Motion.

Nothing really new here. Celebrity figures have always had a positive affect on products when they are caught on camera using them, buying them, wearing them, etc. Sports stars sign huge endorsement deals all the time to supplement their ~~ridiculous~~ well-deserved salaries.

What is different about this situation is the fact that Barack is about to become the leader of the free world and will arguably be the most visible person on the planet, thereby making him more figurative in the general public's daily life. What's more, because of some archaic law about all presedential correspondence needing to be kept for eventual release to the public, Obama's makers will try and persuade him to give up the device during his presidency. God forbid the president be allowed to fire off quick email messages in a crisis situation while he's on his way to Air Force One.

What happens to RIM if and when their most popular endorser is forced to give up his prized possession? I guess they have to go back to John Mayer promoting them.

Hoping the Universe Somehow Sends This My Way

2009-01-11T21:44:00.003-07:00

You can get it here, you know, 'cause you're cool like that

Another Ad That I Thought Was Good...From Back in the Day

2009-01-11T21:25:00.003-07:00

Yeah, I get it, it's another ad featuring Jay-Z. But how can you argue with a guy who's worth north of $300 Million

Really Dig This Commercial For 9IX Cologne

2009-01-10T18:21:00.002-07:00

So Thin, It Will Make Your Mistress Jealous...

2009-01-05T22:27:00.005-07:00

More here.

Heaven

2009-01-01T18:03:00.002-07:00

Would love to have this hanging in my dining room. More here.

2009 Resolutions

2009-01-01T17:04:00.005-07:00

As cheesy as they are, resolutions for the new year tend to give one's life direction. Without further ado, here are mine (in no particular order):

- Live in the Now and utilize the Secret (wait, isn't that the same thing?)

- Travel more

- Dress more like a 30 year-old rather than a, well, 20 year-old

- Work because I 'choose' to, not because I 'have' to

- Participate in a real-estate transaction

- Attend at least one Red Sox game in Boston

- Become more environmentally conscious

- Stick with a mobile phone for more than 6 months

- Take more 'me' time

- Blog more

- Use Twitter more efficiently

- Work out 4-6 times a week more consistently (with emphasis on running at least once a week)

- Most important, realize, it's not always just about me

Chanel Snowboard

2008-12-24T14:49:00.003-07:00

I hope to be rockin' this during Sundance

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-06T11:14:00.002-07:00

"So You May Not Want to Know This..."

2008-10-20T20:27:00.003-07:00

I came across this article about a new, well, relatively new start-up called inSpot. inSpot allows you to communicate to previous sexual partners that you have been infected by an STD and that they should get themselves checked.

It's a pretty basic concept, you pick the type of pre-designed card you want to send, personalize the message, type in the email address of the person whom you want to send it to and send it. The point of the message is to tell your ex-partner that they should get themselves checked for an STD. More than 750 people visit the site daily and nearly 50,000 emails have been sent through it.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad idea, but I'm unsure how it could be effectively used to make money. The site has no ads on it. Yes, it provides a lot of information, and it provides a valuable service (and allows people to play malicious pranks on one another), but it does little to show how it can build sustainable revenue.

In order to be effective and increase it's longevity, the site owners may want to consider partnering with a non-profit such as planned parenthood or a government agency, to provide it with the funding and resources it needs to get it's message and idea out to the community.

Is One of These Things Unlike the Other?

2008-10-14T19:57:00.003-07:00

I'm not sure how I feel about being in such esteemed company:

Picture courtesy of the SF Chronicle

Managing Your Way out of The Storm

2008-10-12T11:51:00.004-07:00

Lots of people with thoughts about how manage there way through the current financial crisis. I have my own thoughts but plan on sharing them at another time. Regardless, Charlie O'Donnell had a great post about how his company is weathering the storm and thought I would reblog it here (and for the record, I agree with every word of it):

Any startup that needs to severely "buckle down" now or any VC firm that needs to do a 180 on their investment strategy wasn't doing it right in the first place.

From the day we took our first investor checks, we've been operating in emergency cashflow management mode--not because we thought the environment was bad, but because of the following:

1) We didn't raise too much money--$350k.

2) Building a new service is hard. The longer you can last, the more features you get to, the more traction you'll have, and the more time you'll have to fix the mistakes you're sure to make.

That makes it a simple equation: Spend less, survive longer, live to die another day.

How do we do that? Well, there's the way we've been doing it all year:

- I teach two entrepreneurship classes on the side to make ends meet.

- We run on four servers we got for free... Two we got from a friend at a startup that blew up and two we got through a big hardware company who seems to have forgotten about the fact that we have them. Lately, we've been asking companies we know who may be upgrading to see if we can grab a few more.

- The servers sit in a old rack we wheeled from 14th and 8th to 23rd and Park when we took it off the hands of someone giving it away on a Unix user list. We now know how many city blocks server rack wheels are meant to travel. The answer is about half the distance to our office.

- We squat rent-free in the small back conference room of one of our investors--soon to be moving into a smaller office across the floor. We're just grateful--we'd work out of the coat closet if they asked us.

- We run some third party software in our stack that would otherwise cost us about 50k/year. We got that we got for free in exchange for kicking the tires on it and getting the company some data.

- When we travel to the West Coast on fundraising trips, we crash with friends instead of staying in hotels.

- We incentivized our developers when we hired them to forgo some current cash compensation for either additional compensation after our next financing or additional equity--and gave them the choice of how much they wanted to do that.

What I'm saying is that, even before the gloom and doom, we watched every penny and saved where we could.

And now, we're out fundraising for our first venture round. If you read the echo chamber, you might think all the VCs have packed up shop and gone home. We've been out talking to VCs and we've generally heard some pretty level-headed thinking. They want to make sure that our burn rate plans are reasonable and that we're giving ourselves enough of a runway--but that's really something they should always be thinking about, right? Good investors have had multiple funds over many cycles and will continue to put money to work in a time-diversified way.

Our current fundraising round is meant to take us from four to eight people (not twenty eight) and give us a full 18 months of running room... And that was also the plan long before the doom.

Anyone who splurges on big fancy offices when they don't need 'em, or who takes ridiculous salaries as founders probably deserves to go under. As Gary Vee said, "This isn't a party. We're building real businesses here."

I think this whole doom and gloom thing is a farce. I mean, don't get me wrong, Sequoia has an amazing track record but they also find a way to stuff 5 million into every first round that they do. Companies should be ultra conservative about cash anyway... The idea that suddenly companies now need to do a 180 on strategy means something was wrong to begin with.

At worst, most companies should need an extra round of financing to weather an additional 18 months. As long as your previous rounds were priced reasonably, this shouldn't be a tremendous issue--certainly not catastrophic. Unfortunately, that's not the case for a lot of these companies. Many, financed by the same VCs that are most likely to sound the alarms, cut off their flexibility by capitalizing at too high a price or ramped up too fast. If you've raised over $10 million, have a headcount over 30, and you don't have a stable revenue stream yet, well... your shipment of fail has just left the factory.

Playing Among Giants

2008-09-27T20:06:00.006-07:00

Earlier today a friend asked what my thoughts were about starting a small online business during a recession. While I was thinking about it, I came up with a larger question, which is, why would anyone start an online business these days? With Google branching out more than ever, it's impossible to become involved in something that they aren't currently involved in or haven't thought of. In fact, a lot of Venture Capitalists commonly ask, "Well, what if Google decides to do 'X'?"

I think there are a lot of ways to answer that question, and the proper way to answer it obviously depends on the product in question. Google is a large company with almost a limitless reach to money and talent. Competing with them on any level is going to be difficult and will take a lot of hard work and money.

Obviously, Google's core product, search (and with it, search advertising) has allowed it to dominate the web. One thing Google has done wrong is expand past their core product offering. By necessity to survive, Google expanded from search (and advertising) to mobile, email, web analytics and more recently video and social networking. Because of this they have become a company that is a 'jack of all trades, master of one'.

So how do you compete with Google? The simple answer would be to find their weakness and exploit it (obviously this is oversimplifying it, but bear with me). In social networking, Orkut has never been big in the United States? Google was not first to market with social networking. It launched in 2004 well after known sites like Friendster and MySpace were dominating. Google knew it could provide a competitive product because of all the people already using Google Search on a daily basis, and all of the information they had access to. Regardless, Facebook launched after Orkut and clearly blew it away.

Another example is video. Google Video and YouTube launched roughly at the same time (for the sake of argument, YouTube may have launched a bit before Google Video). Video on the web was an instant success. With people beginning to have more access to broadband web speeds, the demand for video was growing. Not only that but the product that YouTube built was functionally better than Google Video. The end result was Google purchasing YouTube for $1.6 Billion.

So when one asks "Well, what if Google decides to do 'X'?", the way to answer that question is to say that Google has grown too big to properly develop and execute the strategy that is necessary in the development of the product. The next step in answering that question is to define why Google's product will never be as good as your product.