Disqus - Latest Comments for JonathanJoseph

Re: Mark Cuban Asks: What Is The Role Of Media For Sports Teams?

JonathanJoseph — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 03:29:42 -0000

It's not a zero sum game. There is plenty of high quality sports journalism that comes from people watching the game on TV. The opportunities are still there for independent journalists. It just may come without locker room access.

Re: Mark Cuban Asks: What Is The Role Of Media For Sports Teams?

JonathanJoseph — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:53:50 -0000

CNN and ABC are already close to irrelevant. Their content sucks and that's why the American public is badly misinformed. Same thing goes for ESPN and DMN. Once upon a time, if ESPN and DMN didn't write a post-game analysis and print the box score fans didn't know what happened. Now that's not the case. ESPN and DMN will still be able to write about the game (just like many people who will write about it after watching on TV) just not from inside the locker room or press room.

Re: Mark Cuban Asks: What Is The Role Of Media For Sports Teams?

JonathanJoseph — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 21:30:34 -0000

Thanks for pointing those out!

Re: Mark Cuban Asks: What Is The Role Of Media For Sports Teams?

JonathanJoseph — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 21:29:18 -0000

This isn't about controlling the Web, it's about controlling access to the locker room. There are and will still be plenty of independent analyses of the game from any (growing) number of bloggers, but sports teams are running out of reasons to give competing media members access to the content (interviews, locker room access) that they are currently giving away for free.

Re: A Stimulus Plan For Venture Capital? No Thanks.

JonathanJoseph — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:54:02 -0000

While I may be missing something in translation, I think Fred may be missing the forest for the trees a little here. Anyone who has an understanding of the venture capital business knows that there is already too much money in the venture capital asset class chasing too few exits...but I do not think that is what Friedman meant.

I think Friedman is advocating putting capital in the hands of entrepreneurs (not necessarily VCs) instead of putting it in the hands of GM, where we all know it will be lost. As Jon Callaghan astutely noted, the seed stage market is extremely quiet right now and has a dearth of appropriately capitalized institutional investors playing it in that space even in better times.

If the government pumped $1B into the hands of entrepreneurs it would in no way increase the number of exits, but it would create work and increase the pace of the creative destruction so desperately needed in media, clean-tech and the auto industry. The only losers in that equation are the insolvent companies being propped up and VCs who might even face increased competition for good deals. While your view of the VC business working pretty well comes from your perspective at usv (which has a fantastic model), plenty of venture firms are in need of a fundamental makeover.

As for a government sponsored Venture fund, I know quite a bit about that topic from having spent many years at In-Q-Tel. Without getting into too many specifics, I know that it CAN work. In fact, even with its issues it delivered far more value than most government programs at a fraction of the cost.

Re: The Sellers’ Market for Startup Investing will Restart in ~12 Months

JonathanJoseph — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:24:42 -0000

Great stuff, Scott.

Re: TC50 (Demo Pit): Ultimate Football Network Will Help You Manage Your Fantasy Football Leagues

JonathanJoseph — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:44:39 -0000

Dale,

The point of the Digg-like voting is for the breaking news about injuries or backups to surface quickly. And because we are source agnostic, we include links to fan message boards and individual blogs. Where do you think the news breaks first? On fan message boards or in traditional media?

We're going to continue to improve our user interface and the feature does work.

Jonathan Joseph
Founder and Head Coach, UFN

Re: TC50 (Demo Pit): Ultimate Football Network Will Help You Manage Your Fantasy Football Leagues

JonathanJoseph — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:39:41 -0000

Johnny,

As Don noted, the business model will be more evident next year in the form of premium services and perhaps some other things we are working on. As for the overwhelming majority of users being in free leagues, that's certainly true but a large percentage do purchase premium content and services related to fantasy football. All those preseason draft guides you see on the magazine racks at bookstores are a good example.

Thanks for your interest.
Jonathan Joseph
Founder and Head Coach, UFN