Disqus - Latest Comments for steffanantonas

Re: The Robotic Taxi Driver

Steffan Antonas — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 10:54:03 -0000

It's interesting to see the shift towards open platforms (UberX etc) playing out in similar ways offline the way they do so often online. A flood of low-quality participation, followed by the need for filtering/categorization etc. I'm confident that if driverless cars ever do get widely adopted, the rise from uncommon-to-common will happen when first movers install fleets of driverless cars as on-demand cabs. It'll be interesting to see where that service falls out in the human filtering (as a premium service, or somewhere near the bottom).

Re: Messaging, Notifications, and Mobile

Steffan Antonas — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 11:16:52 -0000

I'd expect to see more fragmentation as well, though, we should expect winners in various categories for the problem each type of messaging app solves. WhatsApp solved the "rich media texting internationally for free" problem, Twitter DM bridges the public to semi-private gap, SnapChat tried to solve the "ephemeral message" problem etc. It makes sense that each new app that solves a new problem well will make it to our phones and that there wont be any true winners for a while.

Re: Whither MBA Mondays?

Steffan Antonas — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 11:52:17 -0000

Has anyone offered to take the MBA Mondays series and put together an ebook? Happy to take care of it as a $0 personal project. This would be a great thing for the community to have as a download here.

Re: Feature Friday: The Explore Page

Steffan Antonas — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 08:18:40 -0000

I think Behance's Discover page deserves an honorable mention here. They're filtering is a best-in-class example of this type of page. Just sayin.

Re: Read-only Launch For Medium & Branch, But Twitter Founders Promise More

Steffan Antonas — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 08:57:28 -0000

I think Medium's format strikes a positive chord - Branch perhaps not so much (for me at least). Medium's collections seems to mirror the way a lot of bloggers write and use categories - a handful of posts or pictures on one topic, grouped in a visual way. I'm not sure how different this is to Wordpress's push towards the new post formats (gallery posts, asides, links, quotes) that Tumblr made popular - it just seems like the layout is slightly less linear. Again, it would seem like collections are the main differentiator. What I don't get (and this is only because I've seen this in read-only mode) is the collections have multiple items by different authors, suggesting that a single user may be curating posts onto a page like Pinterest does. Pinterest seems to be popular because it's purely visual, so it remains to be seen how well longer form content will fare with the same organizational mechanism. One thing's for sure, the strategy of keeping Medium in read-only mode for a while is going to bode well for Ev and Biz. You let the crowd at this too early and it'll get messy fast.

Re: Should we ditch our blogs and just use sites like Google+?

Steffan Antonas — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 09:33:12 -0000

Roger that. Now maybe you could give me some sage advice on how to find the time to actually write? ;-)

Re: A Day Without Distraction: Lessons Learned from 12 Hours of Forced Focus

Steffan Antonas — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:53:31 -0000

It's pretty amazing how productive you can be in small spurts. That was a pretty big eye opener for me.

Re: Should we ditch our blogs and just use sites like Google+?

Steffan Antonas — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 16:27:40 -0000

Fair. Im pretty firmly in this camp too. You can always syndicate, right?

Re: First Fast Follower And The Myth of First Mover Advantage

Steffan Antonas — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:58:07 -0000

Well mothballs or no, you gave it a shot, and I'm sure you learned from it. That's all part of getting to the next big idea, right? Hopefully you got some great quilts out of it. ;-)

Re: Leaders in Digital Series: Exploring the Social TV Experience

Steffan Antonas — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:37:19 -0000

I love the random moment where they go gray-scale on you. :-)

Re: A VC: MBA Mondays: Where To Go Next?

Steffan Antonas — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:37:37 -0000

Watkins didn't have anything to do with it, but the book sounds very interesting. The session was about what the team should focus on in the first 90 days. I know that Fred has written about the various stages of a startup to some degree in this series, but if I remember correctly, those posts were more about the stages as they relate to the structure of the team, rather than the focus of the team. It was just an idea.

Re: A VC: MBA Mondays: Where To Go Next?

Steffan Antonas — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:17:06 -0000

There was an entrepreneurship conference at Harvard yesterday that had a session called "Startup: The First 90 Days". It generated a lot of enthusiastic debate. That might be a good theme for the next few posts.

Re: Four Days in NYC without a Wallet

Steffan Antonas — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:09:59 -0000

It's interesting to see mobile payment technologies filter in to Boston. Starbucks gets it, and I've seen a lot of places downtown using Level Up, but that's really it. Cards are the norm, rather than cash downtown, so I suppose we're being trained away from cash to something more convenient already. The day you have a conversation with your kid about how normal it is to have a chip in your wrist that you wave to pay...let me know. ;-).

Re: Four Days in NYC without a Wallet

Steffan Antonas — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:44:48 -0000

This is fascinating. So did you find that this required some planning or was it easy? On a scale of logistical nightmare to practically effortless, what was it like? You said it was comfortable, but a nuisance. What exactly was the issue(s) in the aggregate? I've never attempted this for more than a day. I'm curious now. Great experiment!

Re: Four Days in NYC without a Wallet

Steffan Antonas — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:38:53 -0000

I really enjoyed this.

Re: Scarcity Is A Shitty Business Model

Steffan Antonas — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:13:42 -0000

I'm not trying to make a statement about what the price of a film should be and I'm not saying a price like $15 would be a boon for Cinemas. Clearly, regularly releasing films to the entire world on demand on opening nights for the price of a few tickets would hurt brick and mortar theaters and other players in the film industry as the industry exists right now. That said, it's likely that film makers (studios) are likely to do better in a direct distribution
model where they reach a broader market at lower effective prices to the
end customer...and I'm saying there's clear demand for such a model. Would the cinemas welcome this? of course not. But does that matter to consumers? of course not.

Re: Scarcity Is A Shitty Business Model

Steffan Antonas — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:29:11 -0000

This is true, especially in the case of 3D, IMAX etc. But then again, I'm not saying I'd ever stop going to the theater. I'm just saying I'd generally pay more per movie experience and buy more movie experiences in general if they were available to me on demand and the timing was right (during a premier etc). That's what matters.

Re: Scarcity Is A Shitty Business Model

Steffan Antonas — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:25:14 -0000

Thanks, Patrick. I'll check Vudu out.

Re: Scarcity Is A Shitty Business Model

Steffan Antonas — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:14:01 -0000

I've gone through this exact same scenario with my wife a hundred times. So frustrating. If there was a site/service called "Still In Theaters" that allowed me to watch movies that were just released (even if they charged $14.99 per view the way that hotels do), I'd have spent hundreds already. It's worth it. Most of the time we'd prefer to see new releases in our living room anyway, just for the convenience factor - especially in the winter. Comfy couch, 50 inch screen, home made snacks and a fridge full of beer. We'd spend almost twice that going to the AMC around the corner if you factor in the trip, the tickets and the snacks. The only reason we go to the theater anymore is because of scarcity, and that's becoming less of an argument daily with boxee, the apple tv and even having an iPad or a Kindle Fire you can curl up with in bed - we watch a ton of content like that. If I were a movie exec, I'd be doing everything I could to innovate around box-office timing and direct distribution models. Pre-screening, directors cuts, movie night packages on opening night that include interviews with the director and actors (instead of movie previews you get in the theater) etc. Bring it on.

Re: Scarcity Is A Shitty Business Model

Steffan Antonas — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 10:04:02 -0000

Re: GetGlue Raises $12M in new financing, Reaches 2M users milestone

Steffan Antonas — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:57:39 -0000

Amazing!! Congrats guys!!

Re: A Day Without Distraction: Lessons Learned from 12 Hours of Forced Focus

Steffan Antonas — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 09:10:37 -0000

I find that a more flexible hybrid approach like using the Pomodoro Technique works the best. Even though planning and batching might work for one day, a lot of times you get interrupted and your schedule gets thrown off because of emergencies or people physically interrupting your flow. Ironically, breaking up your day into forced blocks gets really frustrating not when you have a deadline to meet, but when the pressure is off because the deadline isn't in site. That's when most of us get the least amount done and when imposing structure on your day is draining.

In situations like that I find that using a pomodoro timer for focused periods helps a lot and allows you to approach your day in a more flexible, less stressful manner - and you still get all of the same benefits. All you have to do is set a realistic goal of, say 8 to 10 pomodoros (10 x 25 minutes) a day and you can do a lot of the other stuff that normally distracts you in between. Getting the benefit is about making it easy to have multiple stretches of focus to break up the frenzy, not about structuring your entire day around pre-set intervals. You can check your email every half hour for 10 minutes as long as you get those 8 to 10 25 minute focus sessions in. The first week of using one of these timers is tough, but it trains you to focus longer. After a while you get really good at sitting and focusing for 25 mins and you feel accomplished every time the timer goes off. You can find out more about the technique at http://www.pomodorotechniqu.... If you're on a mac there are also tons of apps available where you can get pomodoro timers for your desktop and mobile devices.

Re: A First Look At The New Facebook Inbox

Steffan Antonas — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 07:44:56 -0000

Google it. By now sure there are tons of posts on how to get it early. Otherwise, just wait and you'll get a banner with a link at the top of facebook when you log in asking you to switch when it's rolled out your account.

Re: iPad or Smartphone: Which Has Impacted Your Life More?

Steffan Antonas — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:47:13 -0000

Richard, you hit the nail on the head. The iPhone's portability means it's always on you, in more situations where it can be a game-changer (maps when you're lost, taking photos and movies spontaneously etc), but the pleasure of the iPad experience wins every time if the conditions merit a choice. Video is better, the web is better and apps like Flipbook make reading vastly more enjoyable. Just holding an iPad for a half hour or so, and then switching back to the iPhone makes it feel tiny (almost disappointingly so) by comparison.

Re: Reinventing Real Estate Websites With WordPress 3 Theme Frameworks: What Agents Need To Know

Steffan Antonas — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 18:41:17 -0000

I love working with you too Michelle! You're a machine and you're always
ahead of the technology curve! You make doing this job a pleasure.