76

Fred Wilson

• StackOverflow 5 May, 2010, 3:04 am
  StackOverflow announced yesterday that our firm Union Square Ventures led a $6mm round of financing in their company yesterday. My partner Brad is joining Stack's board and he will post about this investment on usv.com sometime this week. However, given Kid Mercury's persistent advocacy of niche communities here at AVC, I thought I'd make a couple remarks.Stack makes StackExchange, a hosted software solution for creating niche communities. It is the software that powers the super popular StackOverflow community for programmers and also communities like ServerFault (for sys admins), SuperUser (for tech enthusiasts), MathOverflow (for math geeks), and many more.These communities are all about helping each other out. You want to know the magnitude of graham's number? Well then head over to MathOverflow and ask the question and get some help. You want to know about LVM Mirroring vs Raid 1? Then head over to ServerFault and ask the question and get some help.We think this is a powerful new take on the broadly popular Q&A model on the web. You can go to Yahoo! Answers, Mahalo, or Quora and ask any question. But our bet is vertical communities will make better Q&A sites in the long run as people aggregate around what they know and what they need to know.So if you have a niche community that is vibrant and in need of a Q&A solution, then look for StackExchange 2.0 which is coming soon. 
• Panels 4 March, 2010, 3:43 am
  Mark Suster, who writes the best VC blog out there right now, has a post about sitting on panels. He gives the following advice: Educate Entertain Discuss and Debate (have a dialog) Build Awareness of your firm/company/brand Make connections with your other panelists and follow-up with them Avoid panels that are too big Don't over promote Don't give a long winded intro Don't hog the microphone Don't try to moderate the panel Excellent advice Mark. I agree with all of it. Read Mark's post for the details.All that said, I really hate panels. I hate watching them and I hate being on them even more. I think it's a lazy way to participate in a conference. You show up, answer a few questions, sit up on the stage with a bunch of other people, and then go home.I much prefer the 15-20 minute talk with Q&A afterward. I think I'd prefer even more a 10 minute talk with longer Q&A afterward.Panels rarely turn into interesting discussions. If you want an interesting discussion, have someone good do an on-stage interview. I've done on stage interviews with people like John Battelle, John Heilemann, and Alan Murray and they are fantastic discussions. I'd like to do more of them.I'm on record that I don't like big time conferences. Now I'm on record that I don't like panels. But I do like small conferences focused on a particular group or sector. And I do like to see a short presentation or a well done interview and I also like to deliver them as well. I'd love to see more of all of those things.
• InSITE Talk 5 March, 2010, 2:50 am
  InSITE is a group of business and law school students from Columbia and NYU who provide free consulting services to startup companies. I'm a big fan of InSITE for a bunch of reasons but particularly because it is one of the few programs that I am aware of that operates across school networks here in NYC. We need more of that. Once a year, I spend an hour and a half talking to the InSITE group and then we go out for beers afterward. It's a fun night and I really look forward to it. We did that on Wednesday night of this week.  The talk was recorded and I'll embed two videos that capture my talk which lasted about 15 minutes. We did about an hour of Q&A and all of that was captured as well and is available on InSITE's YouTube channel. Here's the first part of my talk where I talk about the venture capital business. Here's the second part of my talk where I talk about sectors that I'm excited about and a bit about NYC's role in the tech/startup world.
• Candid Camera 7 March, 2010, 3:51 am
  A couple weeks ago I went down to Miami for Future of Web Apps (FOWA). It was a great event and I highly recommend it to web developers and entrepreneurs. I did a keynote talk and the next day I did a three and a half hour workshop. I knew the keynote was being recorded and I had that in my head as I was talking on the stage. I did not know the workshop was being recorded but it was.After the workshop was over, Ryan Carson, the founder of Carsonified which puts on FOWA and a number of other interesting events, asked me if he could post the 3.5 hour workshop video. My immediate reaction was "hell no" but instead I said, "let me look at it first." On Friday I posted two videos that came from the talk I gave at InSITE last wednesday. The entire 1.5 hours of conversation was recorded and is available here. Again, I did not know that the entire talk including Q&A was going to be posted on the web and friday morning, I spent 1.5 hours of time I did not have watching each and every minute of that video to make sure it was cool to have it on the web.If I seem paranoid about this stuff, I am. I watched what happened to my friend Mark Pincus when he said something highly candid and off the cuff last year in an impromptu talk to entrepreneurs that was unfortunately being filmed. Some entrepreneur asked Mark about keeping control of your startup and Mark said that the only sure way to do that is get revenues early. He went on to say that they were so focused on revenues in the early days of Zynga that they did some things he didn't like. He then mentioned the Zwinky toolbar and said he installed it on his machine and couldn't get it off. And then went on to say that he told his developer to take that lead gen offer down.Of course, that's not what everyone saw when TechCrunch posted a clip from that unfortunate video. They just saw the comment about the Zwinky toolbar without the context. So when I see a video of me on the web, I watch the entire thing and look at every minute in that light. I am paranoid about someone taking a 30 second clip and leaving out the rest. If I see anything that is risky in that way, I ask them to take down the video or better yet I ask them not to put it up.That's why I wasted 1.5 hours of my time on Friday morning at 5am watching a video of myself. And that's why I may have to waste 3.5 hours of my time watching my FOWA workshop at some point. I was highly candid in that FOWA workshop and asked people not to Twitter some things I said. That's how I can provide the most value to the people in attendance (as Mark was trying to do). So that FOWA workshop video is risky in my mind.Of course, I can simply ask people not to videotape me or ask them not to post it on the web. But that's not a great option either. There were thirty or forty people in the room at the InSITE talk the other night. Almost 1000 people have watched the first video on YouTube and over fifty have watched every single one of them. That's the power of the web, to reach way more people that can attend in person.So that's the world we have to live in now. One that assumes when you talk in public, it will be recorded and posted on the web. One that assumes that someone will look at that video and seek an opportunity to pull a clip out of context and post it. And so if you do a lot of public speaking, you simply need to speak with that in mind. It makes me feel like a politician to tell you the truth. It's a horrible feeling but honestly I don't know if there is any other way.
• 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.
• The Cashless Exercise 11 March, 2010, 3:07 am
   Sorry for the inside baseball title, this post is not about net exercising options or warrants. It is about an exercise I've been going through since the beginning of the year. I've always walked around with hardly any money on me. It drives the Gotham Gal nuts, but it's who I am. I don't like carrying cash and never have. But the past few months, I've been walking around with no cash, not a dime. I carry a host of stored value cards and credit cards on me. The picture at the top of this post is my wallet. The black cord is my daughter Emily's hairband. In that stack is a metrocard, my drivers license, a parking pass for my garage, several american express cards for various personal and business entities, a visa card, and several debit cards. That's it.I've gone without a wallet for years and this stack of cards has been my system for the past decade. But I've always supplemented it with some cash in my pocket as well. Not anymore.What this exercise has taught me is that cash is almost unnecessary these days. Almost is the operative word. You have to work a little bit to operate without cash. I avoid the $2 or $3 purchase. I've never been much for the $2 or $3 purchase, but it does happen. Earlier this week I stopped at Joe, The Art Of Coffee for an espresso on the way to work. I forgot that Joe is cash only. Fortunately Joe gave me the espresso and took an IOU from me. I felt bad about that and now I have to figure out how to pay him back without breaking my no cash diet.The thing that was holding me back from going no cash was the time it took to check out with credit or debit. But in the past year or two, most merchants have moved to a no signature required on transactions less than $20. If no signature is required, a credit or debit transaction is faster than a cash transaction.And then there's cabs. It took me until this year to give up my 25 year habit of paying cabbies in cash. I thought the credit transaction would take too long or be unreliable. My kids told me I was being foolish and to give it a try. And I was sold in the first day. Paying cabbies with a credit card is simply a superior experience. It's fast, there's no waiting for change, and tipping is easier and I find myself being more generous. All in all it is much better.So I believe we are on the verge of a cashless society, at least in NYC. I may be on the bleeding edge of it, but if I can go cashless, so can others.The other thing this cashless exercise has taught me is walking around with plastic cards wrapped in a hairband is silly. We need to take the next step which I am sure is the phone. I've always got my mobile phone on me unless I am home. It would be so nice if I could simply enter all those stored value cards, credit and debit cards into my phone and stop with the stack of plastic entirely.I hope to continue this cashless exercise going, at least when I am in NYC and not traveling. I honestly think I can do that. And as for the stack of cards in my pocket, well I'd like to get rid of them too.
• 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.
• Mobile Audio 23 February, 2010, 5:00 am
  There's a reason why radio and outdoor (billboard) advertising together became a $30bn to $50bn annual domestic market. When people are mobile, like driving a car, they are not reading, they are not watching video, they are not opening email. At least they should not be doing those sorts of things while driving a car.While radio and billboards will still be attractive advertising opportunities for some time to come, there is a new way to reach the mobile consumer - on his or her phone.I'm not talking about calling you or text messaging you on your phone. I am talking about when you connect your android phone into your car's audio jack or when you put on your iPhone headphones and hop on the treadmill at the gym.In these situations, you are likely listening to audio and increasingly streaming audio. That audio stream can contain commercial messaging if it is done right. And because the phone, as opposed to the car radio or the billboard, knows a lot about you, including where you are, the messaging can be targeted (ie made relevant).This is the opportunity our portfolio company TargetSpot was built to go after. When the company was started, it decided to focus on terrestrial radio companies and help them monetize their internet streams. It is the leader in that market today. Then it added "pure play internet radio" providers like Yahoo! Music, MySpace Music, and AOL Radio to it's network and further solidified its lead.And today, TargetSpot is rolling out its first mobile audio advertising service, in partnership with Slacker. If you want to reach people who are listening to streaming audio via their phones in their cars, in the gym, at work, and at home you now can do that via TargetSpot.Slacker is one of several streaming audio companies focused on the mobile phone. Others include Pandora and Last.fm. I expect we'll see hundreds of providers over time.And I expect that we'll find out that the audio format is one of the most powerful forms of mobile advertising. Just like it has been in the offline world for the past century.
• Internet Freedom 8 April, 2010, 3:27 am
  I've never liked the term net neutrality to be honest. And in the wake of the FCC's legal loss to Comcast over bit torrent throttling, the net neutrality camp (which I am very much in) is on its heels. This post is not about that decision or its ramifications, which I think are significant. It's about the need to frame the issue in a different way. My partner Albert got me thinking about Internet Freedom with his post the other morning. Internet Freedom is about sustaining the era of permissionless innovation that has characterized the first fifteen years of the commercial Internet in this country and brought us thousands of new big profitable companies, millions of jobs, and a vast array of new services and devices that have changed our lives and made them better. Our firm, Union Square Ventures, focuses most of our time on finding companies, investing in them, and working with the entrepreneurs to build them. But a few years ago, we made the decision to invest a small amount of our time on public policy issues, like net neutrality, patent reform, spectrum reform, immigration reform, and a handful of other ones. All of this and more is about Internet Freedom. Our business requires it. If we lose Internet Freedom, we won't have any companies we would want to invest in and we'll close up shop and move on with our lives. That would be our loss. The bigger loss would be to our society which has benefitted mightily from Internet Freedom and will continue to benefit as long as we don't lock everything down and close everything up. So as Albert says, "the price of Internet freedom too is eternal vigilance." We'll be stepping up our efforts inside our firm and outside our firm in this area. It's so very important.Related articles by ZemantaCourt Tells FCC It Has No Mandate To Enforce Net Neutrality (And That's A Good Thing) (techdirt.com) What Happens Now with Net Neutrality (dailykos.com)
• 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)