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Re: Would You Spend the Next 20-30 Years of Your Career in Silicon Valley?

chudson — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:29:18 -0000

That was a good find - I read it and was thinking the same thing.

Re: Would You Spend the Next 20-30 Years of Your Career in Silicon Valley?

UltimateFootballNetwork — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:26:29 -0000

Alan Patricof had a relevant take in the NYT Dealbook today http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/an...

Re: Would You Spend the Next 20-30 Years of Your Career in Silicon Valley?

UltimateFootballNetwork — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:24:28 -0000

Great stuff, as always.

The round peg-square hole analogy is great. Most existing VC funds were raised before the new economics were clearly understood and are still targeting exit opportunities that are unlikely to work out given the move from product->service businesses. The new economics can support plenty of exits at good multiples as long as the economics/expectations are well understood and that will happen when we start hearing about Dogster as the Web2.0 posterchild rather than DIgg.

Re: Michigan Football and the U.S. Economy: Taking the Long View

UltimateFootballNetwork — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:13:54 -0000

Roger,

Having graduated from Tulane in 98, I have been following RichRod closely for 10 years now and am sure the pain will only last 1 year. The data for the RR transition at Clemson and West Virginia make that clear. As a startup CEO I would kill for that kind of visibility into the economic recovery.

Re: Go-to-market strategies for vertical social products

UltimateFootballNetwork — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:08:50 -0000

Thanks. That is what I was looking for!

Re: Go-to-market strategies for vertical social products

andrew_null — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:08:43 -0000

The one that scales quite well is ad-buying, figuring out what it takes to become profitable, and plowing that investment back into ad-buying. Especially given the down ad-economy, if you can make this work, you'll have a nice distribution channel.

But certainly these vertical products tend to grow much more slowly than the purely viral horizontal stuff. Good luck!

Re: Go-to-market strategies for vertical social products

UltimateFootballNetwork — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:25:07 -0000

I am currently talking to companies with complementary technologies to work on some distribution partnerships. Any suggestions for other kinds of distribution strategies for vertical apps?

Re: Go-to-market strategies for vertical social products

andrew_null — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:15:11 -0000

what were you looking to hear?

Re: Go-to-market strategies for vertical social products

UltimateFootballNetwork — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:54:53 -0000

I was really looking forward to your thoughts on this particular topic given that this is precisely something I am working through right now, but I found little other than your point that vertical products have a harder time getting that viral-type of rapid growth.

I think the recent economic developments and the associated the early stage fundraising climate are going to make the horizontal viral success stories harder and harder to come by. The very nature that makes them viral--- horizontal, simple and mostly free are typical of the Web2.0 features that may be unable to become products or companies, with Twitter being the most obvious example.

Vertical applications are much easier to monetize, both through advertising as well as via more traditional business models and are much more likely to be the focus of whoever is left among the early stage consumer internet investors. And because distribution strategies are harder for all the reasons you mentioned, a good discussion around how to identify complementary opportunities for distribution partnerships would be valuable for all.

Re: Fantasy football draft today | My Philly Network

Solacetech — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:39:00 -0000

Thanx!

Re: Fantasy football draft today | My Philly Network

UltimateFootballNetwork — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:23:44 -0000

Great start, Anthony!

Re: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/08/is-geek-tech-go.html

dannyallenjr — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:57:10 -0000

I think that a subset of the geeks is the blogger geeks, kind of an uber geek. I live and work with geeks and people who have iPhones and Blackberries and such, but some of the things that the blogger geeks have adopted and loved and written about, Twitter being a prime example, are not necessary and even annoying to the regular geek set.

I think we have to be careful of being in the echo chamber of the geek blogosphere. I know I try to (somewhat unsuccessfully at times).

Re: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/08/is-geek-tech-go.html

UltimateFootballNetwork — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:54:02 -0000

I agree that this is a good discussion and all of us need more data points. I've been doing some early product testing in the social news space and have been shocked at the number of people who can't identify Digg or "social news".

This discussion is an extension of Josh Koppelman's old post on the "Techcrunch 50,000". It's now the "Techcrunch 1M" but nonetheless it's still on the wrong side of the chasm and there is no doubt that the 24-hour cycle of social media has created an "echo chamber".

Re: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/08/is-geek-tech-go.html

fredwilson — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:05:52 -0000

This is a good discussion. We all have anecdotal data points. If I rely just on mine, I could head faked. But if we get enough people weighing in, we'll see a bigger and better picture of where we are

Re: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/08/is-geek-tech-go.html

UltimateFootballNetwork — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:51:06 -0000

Fred,

While I agree that this is the single most important issue for investors (and entrepreneurs expecting adoption) I would disagree with your conclusion based on my own data points. Being that we are in "wedding season" and I'm 32, I've had a chance to catch up with old friends on 3 of the last 5 weekends and I've gone out of my way to ask everyone I could if they were aware of certain web services.

All were "white collar"-types who used Blackberrys/iPhones and considered themselves "internet savvy", yet not a one of them had ever heard of Digg, Twitter or Friendfeed. One person told me that they had "heard of" Digg and Twitter but had no idea what they are. Facebook was the only one that seemed to have crossed over to the mainstream and more than a few folks I talked to were still reluctant to use it.

Perhaps these folks haven't been influenced by their children yet. Either way, I don't think we're quite there.

Re: Early adopters vs the Mainstream: Google Insights points out websites only used by Silicon Valley nerds

UltimateFootballNetwork — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:07:46 -0000

Now THAT is some interesting data.

It seems as though we're a ways off from consistent, reliable web traffic analysis tools.

Re: Early adopters vs the Mainstream: Google Insights points out websites only used by Silicon Valley nerds

evgen — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:03:32 -0000

This sort of analysis is a short step up from reading goat entrails. A breakdown on search terms is not even close to an actual traffic analysis. For fun I decided to compare the real numbers of the site I work for (large, unnamed online news service) with its google insight geographic breakdown. Google searches on the company name mostly came from appalachia. Real geoip correlated server logs show that less than 5% of our domestic hits came from the top four states Google listed. None of these states were in the top ten when compared to the real traffic numbers.

To be honest, you would be better off throwing darts at a map than to use this as an actual analysis technique.

Re: Early adopters vs the Mainstream: Google Insights points out websites only used by Silicon Valley nerds

UltimateFootballNetwork — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:45:17 -0000

Wow. Techcrunch's data is a little surprising.

Zero volume in places like NYC/Boston/Austin/Boulder/Chicago? I'm a big believer in the "echo chamber" problem but this seems a little extreme.

Re: louisgray.com: Developers Are People Too, Don't Forget

UltimateFootballNetwork — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:33:53 -0000

Failure is the overwhelming likelihood for any of these Web Services, it's not an insult to point that out. The startup world is pretty cut-throat, and those few who make it successfully across the chasm will be richly rewarded. As is often said, "There's no such thing as bad publicity", especially in the extremely noisy world of social media.

Re: Glam offers new video ad network, gets acquisition offer for $1.3B

UltimateFootballNetwork — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:38:48 -0000

Holy smokes! Glam turned down $1.3B?! That would be interesting.

Re: The Exploitation of Web Culture - what did you expect

UltimateFootballNetwork — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:31:25 -0000

While we would all agree that these social media presences will disappear at the end of the campaigns, the Republicans (gulp) are at least trying to understand web 2.0 as opposed to just using it for the time being. Newt Gingrich of all people is leading that charge.