76

Fred Wilson

• Empowering Your Team 31 January, 2010, 7:51 am
  Mark Pincus, founder/CEO of our portfolio company Zynga, is interviewed in today's NY Times on the topic of leadership. The part about empowering and scaling the team is really great. You can manage 50 people through the strength of your personality and lack of sleep. You can touch them all in a week and make sure they’re all pointed in the right direction. By 150, it’s clear that that’s not going to scale, and you’ve got to find some way to keep everybody going in productive directions when you’re not in the room. Maybe Mark can manage 50 people through willpower and lack of sleep but I've seen many entrepreneurs hit this wall with much smaller teams. The question is what are you going to do about it?Mark says "make everyone the CEO of something." I’d turn people into C.E.O.’s. One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said, “By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.” And that way, everyone knows who’s C.E.O. of what and they know whom to ask instead of me. And it was really effective. People liked it. And there was nowhere to hide.He goes on to explain how this works and why it is so powerful. Read the entire interview if you are running a startup and looking for some ideas on scaling the team.
• Quirky and The Cone Of Silence 2 February, 2010, 8:04 am
  My family is tired of hearing me talk about "The Cone Of Silence". This is an electronics product I'd love to have. I am not sure if it can be built with the current state of noise canceling technology, but here is how it would work.The Cone Of Silence is a small electronics product that you can bring to a restaurant in your pocket, place on the table, and create a "noise cancelled zone" around the table you and your friends are sitting at. I've talked to a number of people about this idea in the past year. My dad is a former engineering professor. He thinks it would be hard to develop successfully. My father in law is a former engineering professor and also spent years working with the US Navy on underwater submarine detection (and evasion). He thinks it is not possible to build in the compact way I want it to work. I've gotten similar reactions to this product idea from a number of other people who know a thing or two about sound waves and physics.But I am not giving up. Last week I was introduced to Quirky, a community of product enthusiasts where people submit product ideas and the community develops them together. Each week one product is selected to build and launch in a pre-sale to the community. If enough of the product is sold to break even on the production costs, it is built and sold and then launched commercially. Quirky has been doing this for about six months now and they've developed 30 products together and launched about six commercially. You can see the products that have launched commercially on the front page of the Quirky website. Some of these products are also available in offline retail. So as you might expect, I submitted The Cone Of Silence idea to Quirky last weekend and it is one of 27 candidates to be selected to be "product 0031". The idea has generated some comments and, like my dad and father in law, a few people think its not possible to build the way I want it to work. We will see if any good ideas emerge. Even if the Quirky community doesn't figure out how to build The Cone Of Silence, I am not giving up on the idea. I'm not giving up on teleportation either. And I think the idea behind Quirky is great. We've seen communities like Threadless, Etsy, Kickstarter, and others do amazing things. There's certainly room for a community to build people powered products. Check out Quirky (and The Cone Of Silence) and let me know what you think. UPDATE: For your viewing pleasure, courtesy of "Maxwell" in the comments
• NYC BigApps Winners Announced 5 February, 2010, 3:38 am
  I've posted about the NYC BigApps contest a few times here. And you all helped me with my chore of judging all 85 apps. Thank you for that. Last night I walked up The Highline to IAC Headquarters to attend an event where the winners were announced. I also manned the "Investors Bar" where a number of fellow venture and angel investors sat and talked to the entrepreneurs in attendance. Kind of like the genius bar, but the geniuses were on the other side lining up to talk to us. The winners were (cutting and pasting from the NY Times here):---------------------------------------------- WayFinder NYC: An application designed for smartphones powered by Google’s Android operating system allows users to find the closest subway entrance. It uses an approach known as augmented reality, overlaying subway line symbols on a live view through the phone’s camera. Taxihack: Like Yelp for cabs, this Web tool allows people to post comments on individual taxis and their drivers via e-mail or Twitter.Big Apple Ed: This Web-based guide offers detailed profiles, reviews and information about the city’s network of public schools.NYC Way that offers a range of information for city residents and visitors, took home the “Popular Choice” award, determined by an online vote. ---------------------------------------------I use Wayfinder on my Google phone. It is a very cool app that combines mapping and augmented reality to get you to the nearest subway. I also really like Taxihack. You can email or twitter about your cab driver right from the cab. Two other "apps" that I liked very much which got honorable mentions but no awards were Actuatr and Push Pin Web. These are both developer tools which make the often messy data from government agencies much easier to develop apps with. Better tools will lead to better apps. I got to meet the teams behind ParkShark, PrimoSpot, Taxihack, NYC Way, UpNext, NYCPRO, HistoryBus, NYCSamosa, SpokesNYC, and a few more that I can't recall. It was a bit crazy at the Investor Bar last night.I also came home with my android phone stocked full of mobile apps like PrimoSpot and Always Prompt, both of which I bought last night and am looking forward to using to help me with the daily grind. Finally, I'd like to say that it was a thrill to see the mayor up there on stage with NYC entrepreneurs. He's the most successful tech entrepreneur in NYC but we don't see him very much in the tech scene. We need more role models, as I talked about here, and he's the best we've got in NYC. I hope he spends more time with us this term.Related articles by ZemantaNew York City Names Winners of Apps Contest (bits.blogs.nytimes.com) Meet 10 NYC Big Apps Contenders (centernetworks.com) The Big Apps Contenders: Exploring NYC (centernetworks.com) NYC's BigApps Winners Announced: WayFinder, NYC Way Lead the Pack (readwriteweb.com) TaxiHack Lets New Yorkers Rate Their Ride (blogs.wsj.com) NYC BigApps Winners Announced (techstartups.com)
• Lightweight Advocacy 6 February, 2010, 4:15 am
  I was at a board meeting of a non profit this week and the talk turned to "advocacy" and whether or not the non profit should be doing any of that. I had to ask what the definition of advocacy was just to be clear what we were talking about. It's not something I've traditionally been involved in. When I think of advocacy, I think of politics, lobbying, public relations, and a bunch of other "heavyweight" behaviors that I abhor. Wikipedia's definition of advocacy is: Advocacy is the pursuit of influencing outcomes — including public-policy and resource allocation decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions — that directly affect people’s current lives. (Cohen, 2001)Thankfully, the non profit concluded that it should largely keep doing what it is doing and let the work they do, the people they engage, and the outcomes they produce send the message. That's my kind of advocacy.Later in the week, I read Brad Feld's blog post urging immigrant startup founders to tell their story. The "startup visa working group" which I am a member of is recruiting immigrant startup founders to tell their story online here. If you are an immigrant startup founder, I urge you to go do that. It won't take long and will be incredibly valuable "advocacy" on an important issue.And it occurred to me that the "startup visa movement" is a case study in lightweight advocacy.The problem is relatively simple and should be easy to fix. If you are an immigrant starting a company here in the US, you can get kicked out of the country if you don't have the right visa. I've seen it happen a couple times in the past year to founders in our portfolio.And these are people starting new companies here in the US who are hiring people and creating new jobs, and not just any job, but high paying jobs. It makes no sense to kick these people out of the country. It's hurtful to them, their companies, and our country and economy.So last September, Brad Feld wrote a post about this issue on his blog. It attracted a fair bit of interest in the VC and entrepreneur community, got a lot of comments, and got some people talking to each other. Brad's post was inspired by an essay Paul Graham had written last spring.As a result of Brad's post, we formed a working group of a few VCs and a few entrepreneurs that we call the "startup visa group." We've continued to blog about this issue, but more importantly, we've started calling and talking to our elected officials and their staffs. We have a plan and we have a legislative proposal to fix this issue.Now we are collecting the stories that we need to galvanize the elected officials to act. When that is done, the group is headed to Washington to push this forward.There are no lobbyists involved. There is no PR firm involved. No campaign contributions have been made. No PACs or other advocacy groups have been formed.Everyone involved has a full time job either starting and running a company or building and managing a portfolio of companies. We are doing this "nights and weekends."And we can do that because this is "lightweight advocacy". We are using our blogs, the internet, social media, and our relationships with our elected officials to move this issue forward. We'll see if we are effective. I sure hope we will be. It will fix an important issue in the startup economy and it will be yet another example of the internet is providing tools to do things the way they should be done.
• Flash, HTML5, and Mobile Apps 7 February, 2010, 6:12 am
  About a year ago, I wrote a post about Apple's "blind spot" for Flash. I took more heat for that post than anything else I've written here other than political posts. It opened my eyes to the fact that Flash vs HTML5 is one of the most politically heated topics in the tech business. The third rail, as it were. The choice of what technology web developers use to produce rich browser based applications is a big deal with a lot of important ramifications for companies, investors, and most importantly users. Jeremy Allaire, creator of ColdFusion and Brightcove, addresses this issue today on TechCrunch. It's an excellent post full of great facts and insights, including this one: What few people realize is that while H.264 appears to be an open and free standard, in actuality it is not. It is a standard provided by the MPEG-LA consortsia, and is governed by commercial and IP restrictions, which will in 2014 impose a royalty and license requirement on all users of the technology. How can the open Web adopt a format that has such restrictions? It can’t. Jeremy predicts that "Google will make an end-run on this by launching an open format with an open source license for the technology, which according to industry experts delivers almost all of the same technical benefits as H.264."If you are a web developer, entrepreneur, or investor, I suggest you go read Jeremy's post in full. It's very good. If you don't plan to read it, I'll summarize. Jeremy makes two big points. The first is that HTML5 vs Flash is not a winner take all battle (at least for many years). He predicts that for web apps, we'll see more and more developers move to HTLM5. But for video, gaming, and other "immersive" applications, we'll see developers sticking with Flash for a long time. His second point is that the desktop web and the mobile web are going to play out very differently. He says: in the context of hand-held computing, where Apple is politically motivated to block the Flash runtime, it is apparent video publishers will be driven to build and operate solutions that leverage HTML5 Video on mobile and iPad browsing environments. When it comes to HTML5 vs Flash, there are technical arguments, economic arguments, and political arguments. And, unfortunately, the political ones carry a lot of weight.Jeremy outlines the political agendas of two of the big players in this battle: a web-centric, HTML5-centric handheld world favors Google because it can leverage it’s existing dominance in search and web advertising. A proprietary App-centric universe favors Apple because it can become the primary gatekeeper to reaching the mobile audience and already has a pole position in integrating payments and advertising into content applications. I know where I personally come out in this fight. I much prefer a "web-centric handheld world" to a "proprietary app centric universe". And that's why I carry a Google phone instead of an iPhone. For me, it's a political statement as much as anything else.Someday soon, I'll be reading a blog on my Google phone and I'll come upon a video in a Flash player and I'll be able to hit play and watch it on my phone. That's apparently not going to happen in Apple's "proprietary app centric universe".  The good news for all of us is that no one company is going to dictate how this plays out. Jeremy says in the wrapup of his post: it is evident that the competing interests of platform vendors, consumers and app and content publishers will ensure that this remains a fragmented and competitive environment for many years to comeRegardless of whose political camp you are in, we can all agree that a competitive environment is best. Even if it means a more complicated development environment.
• Twilio 9 February, 2010, 7:45 am
  While everyone was on the holiday break at the end of last year, Twilio wrote a blog post that very few people noticed. They announced that our firm, Union Square Ventures, had become an investor in Twilio. Twilio is not a services for the masses. Yet. It's a service that web developers can use to build telephony apps or build telephony into their app. This image on Twilio's home page says it all. In the "Areas of Interest" post that I wrote at the start of the year, I wrote: Developers are the new power users. If you cater to them, you can build a large user base with significant network effects.We believe that one way to build a large network of web users is to build something that makes developers' lives easier. And Twilio does exactly that. It masks all the complexity of telephony into a finite number of API calls that web developers can use to build apps quickly and easily.When we first met Twilio, the founder Jeff Lawson blew me away when he told me that the entire service was built on five API calls; , , , , and . Clearly they've added a few more, like highlighted above.Today, Twilio is announcing they've added SMS to the service, with . Now you can easily allow users to access your web app via SMS without having to set up shortcodes, dealing with aggregators, doing the configurations, etc. TechCrunch has the details.My partner Albert led this investment for us. He's a web developer himself and has already saved himself countless hours with Twilio. Albert wrote a post about Twilio on the USV blog today. If you are a developer of web apps and are interested in adding telephony, you should check out Twilio.Related articles by ZemantaTwilio Raises $3.7 Million For Powerful Telephony API (techcrunch.com)
• Startl Design Boost and Startl Accelerator 11 February, 2010, 3:47 am
  Startl is a very interesting new project based here in NYC. It's a startup accelerator (like Y Combinator, TechStars, Seedcamp, etc) but focused entirely on entrepreneurs working in education. It's a non-profit backed by the Hewlett, MacArthur, and Gates foundations which is quite a collection if you ask me.  Another thing that makes Startl interesting is the partnerships it has with IDEO, DreamIT Ventures, and Berkeley & Noyes (leading investment bankers in education). Startl has two programs that anyone working on "hacking education" should be interested in: Design Boost is a five day bootcamp here in NYC from March 15th to 19th. This first Design Boost will focus on the design of mobile apps for learning and will feature designers from IDEO who will help the selected teams with their design and development process. Up to 15 teams will be selected for Design Boost. Details on how to apply are here. The application deadline for Design Boost is February 22nd.Accelerator is part of the DreamIT Ventures summer program in Philadelphia from May to August. Startl will select five "learning companies" to participate in the regular DreamIT Ventures program. Details on how to apply are here. The application deadline for Accelerator is March 15th.Startl was started by two friends of mine and our firm, Diana Rhoten and Laurie Racine, and their colleague Phoenix Wang. We've known Diana and Laurie for a long time, they are committed to the concept that the innovation/startup world can have a big social impact, particularly on education. I am excited by their work on Startl and hope that some of you will apply and take advantage of these two programs.
• Thoughts On Buzz 12 February, 2010, 3:13 am
  Reece asked me in the comments the other day what I thought about Buzz. I told him I hadn't had the time to turn it on and play with it. I did that later in the day and have been using Buzz for a couple days. So here goes Reece.I'll state right up front that there are elements of Buzz that are derivative of Twitter, Tumblr, Disqus, and Foursquare (and many other services) and being that our firm is invested in some of those services, I can't be and won't be unbiased in my views of Buzz.I think Buzz is Google's finest implementation of "social" to date. It is a given in the web/tech circles that "google doesn't get social". So maybe the most important thing about Buzz is that it puts that idea to rest. I also think that the decision to place Buzz into gmail was a smart move. Every time I move to my gmail tabs (I keep gmail open in two to three tabs at all times), I see something like this: That's quite a temptation to click on Buzz and see what those 42 messages are about. And I've done that at least a dozen times the past couple days.But that is also one of my big issues with Buzz. That (42) number includes replies to buzzes (can I call them tweets?) that the people I am following leave. Buzz copies the FriendFeed user experience for the most part. And as much as I admire FriendFeed and the people who built it, I don't believe that is a compelling experience for the mainstream user.When I follow Pete Cashmore in Buzz, I'm basically following all of his fans. And my Buzz timeline is filled with all of their replies to his posts. I think that user experience works well in something like this blog and the comments. I don't think it works well in a mass medium where I want to follow hundreds of people.Like FriendFeed, Buzz allows me to "pump my data into it". It is an aggregator as well as a updating service. But that poses a problem in some ways. What does this service want to be? Once I pumped this blog, my tumblog, and my twitter into Buzz, I was done. You can all follow me in Buzz here.I've updated Buzz once or twice since then, but since I can update Buzz via this blog, twitter, and tumblr, I think that will be my favored approach. That's what I do with Facebook and that's what I did with FriendFeeed. I'm not saying that everyone will do that. Clearly that is not the case. But of the 9 million posts and comments that people have submitted to Buzz since it launched, how many of those were brand new status updates and how many were items automatically pumped into Buzz and how many were comments?I believe the most compelling experiences on the Internet do one thing and do it very well and then open themselves up to other services via an API. Buzz is trying to do way too much in my opinion and while that may work for many people, it does't work that well for me.I think mobile presents some amazing opportunities for Google and Buzz. You can already see Buzzes near you on Google Maps on Android (via a layer in the map). I think that's a very interesting place and way to receive Buzzes. And when you search for and select a specific place on Google Maps on Android, you can "buzz about that place." I did that the other day using my Google phone in my office. That's like a Foursquare checkin and you know that I think mobile checkins are a fantastic way to create social utility.My partner Albert who still builds web apps, posted about Buzz and he had some favorable things to say about the Buzz API. If third party app developers start building Buzz apps, or building Buzz into their existing mobile apps, that will be a big plus. I'm sure it will happen.So in summary, Buzz doesn't really do it for me but I think it's an important new entrant in the world of social media and given that it's from google, it's in gmail, it's nicely integrated into their mobile offerings, it has an excellent API, and it will be constantly improved, it's likely that Buzz will turn out to be an important player in the social media world.
• Some Interesting Facts About Chatroulette 14 February, 2010, 4:36 am
  We had a very interesting discussion about Chatroulette here last week. Since then, reporters at the NY Times got the founder to talk and they posted the email exchange here. Here are some interesting facts from the NY Times piece: The founder, Andrey Ternovskiy, is a 17 year old high school student who lives in Moscow He created the site for "fun" and had no "business goals" for it It was inspired by his extensive use of Skype web chat with his friends It spread entirely by word of mouth He's had to rewrite the code several times in order to allow it to scale His relatives invested some "funds" so he could buy more servers Right now, he's doing it all himself Chatroulette runs on seven servers in Frankfurt, Germany He is planning to add more servers in new geographic locations Andrey has never been to the USA but would love to visit He has ideas for more "weird in a good sense" features He's not sure what Chatroulette is any more He thinks it would be best to "found Chatroulette" as a US-based company I think we'll reach out to Andrey and offer him a visit to NYC. I'm still not sure if this is something we should invest it, but I'd sure like to meet this guy. He reminds me of many great young entrepreneurs we've worked with and his story sounds so familiar.
• SeedStart NYC 17 February, 2010, 3:34 am
  For several years, we've been talking on this blog about programs like Y Combinator, TechStars, SeedCamp, and many others. I call them startup accelerators. One thing I've consistently heard is that NYC needs its own startup accelerator.Well it is happening this summer, courtesy of the city's own NYC Seed fund.The program is called SeedStart. The program mirrors much of what the pioneer in this sector, Y Combinator, does. It is an eight week summer program. They will select up to ten teams who will get $20k in funding, space to work, and mentorship in return for 5% equity in the business and the opportunity to launch at the end of the program to a large audience.If you are interested, you need to hurry. The application deadline is the end of the month, February 28th. The acceptances will be made on March 15th. If this is for you, apply here.This is a great thing for NYC and the first time entrepreneurs who really benefit from this kind of accelerator program. I am really thankful for Owen Davis' leadership in making this happen. I am also grateful to our colleagues at Contour Ventures, IA Ventures, Polaris, and RRE for their support of this effort.