October 2011
1 post
5 tags
September 2011
2 posts
Watch
Here is my Hackathon pitch. I re-built something I tried to build last year, from scratch by building a social commerce object feed system at the back end and then plugging it together to make an ebay on facebook. It still has the old ugly look of my first effort, but design should be easily solved now it works properly at the back end. In fact it’s quite a powerful back end as it can...
August 2011
3 posts
fred-wilson:
takin VC money
nice work smixx
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when...”
– Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995) page 25 (via spytap)
February 2011
1 post
Poor ad copy
There’s an ad for pomegranate based shampoo, or some such personal product, and it contains a line like: some scholars say that it was a pomegranate not an apple that Eve gave to Adam. It’s such a stupid line it just leaps out at me and annoys me every time - and that’s saying something for such a bland ad for an uninteresting product.
What scholars? Surely either you’re...
November 2010
4 posts
Life after changing the world
The biggest problem entrepreneurs have is focus. When you’re an idea factory it’s unsurprising that even when deep into a startup you are passionate about the ideas don’t stop coming. Personally I cope with this by having a notebook and new ideas go into the back of the notebook not to be pursued until the current one has run its course.
So I don’t have any doubt that I...
2 tags
Rooftop Cinema: Big Trouble In Little China
There are many, many cool things about living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Of course if you are a high-tech entrepreneur and are compelled to do startups for a living, driven by a passion to change the world, there’s nowhere like Silicon Valley (whatever the dreams of so many pretenders around the world).
One of the coolest new things, for me: A small gathering of movie enthusiasts on a...
“Love’s pleasure last but a moment; love’s sorrow last all through life.”
– (via srellabr)
6 tags
Never interfere in a boy and girl fight
“People often ask me if I have any words of advice for young people. Well, here are a few simple admonitions for young and old: Never interfere in a boy and girl fight….”
— Words of advice for young people, William S. Burroughs
I tend not to give advice nowadays. I listen. I will express an opinion sometimes (okay, often). But I won’t tell you what to do....
September 2010
2 posts
Is reliability a fatal issue for the PC industry?
My mother’s laptop started having power issues a few weeks back. I told her I suspected it was the battery as I’d had similar issues with a previous laptop. She took the advice of the Fry’s man that in fact she just needed to buy his new power adapter and all would be well. It seemed so for a little while but it’s seriously malfunctioning now. I suspect it has something...
August 2010
18 posts
Mellow Mondays: Dylan Thomas
The week will be busy enough. Start out today with a few moments of serenity. I love the opening verse of the Dylan Thomas poem:
And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they...
The 4 waves of the PC era - what's coming next?
I have been noodling for a while over this post by Om Malik: http://bit.ly/bNwuUP
WHAT’S HAPPENED? WHAT’S COMING?
I wanted to throw my own oar into the pond on this one, as it’s a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about over the last year or two, as we’ve turned our vague ideas about where “Apps” were going into a beta-product allied to a bold vision for the future. You can slice...
listening to "The Jennifers - Just Got Back... →
i remember putting these guys on for a gig in 1992 before they became SuperGrass - gorgeous
listening to "City Sickness [Tindersticks]" →
I have loved this song for so many years I am surprised that it’s beauty has not faded
listening to "Tindersticks - Whiskey →
listening to "Tindersticks - Tyed" →
listening to "Tindersticks - Nectar" →
listening to "Micah P Hinson - The Day Texas Sank... →
listening to "Mazzy Star - Fade Into You" →
listening to "Whiskeytown - Inn Town" →
listening to "Counting Crows - Colorblind" →
listening to "Nirvana - Where Did You Sleep Last... →
listening to "Kristin Hersh - Your Ghost" →
listening to "Cracker Take Me Down to the... →
listening to "dEUS ft Gary Lightbody - Hotel... →
listening to "Buffalo Tom - Frozen Lake" →
Yahoo! Mail - can it be saved?
It pains me to see Yahoo! becoming the butt of jokes in the start-up community, particularly as for so many of us they were an inspiration, once upon a time. But, sadly, common wisdom round these parts is that they’re walking dead, losers, a place good companies go to die. I sincerely hope they can claw back from that.
Like almost everyone who’s been online for more than a decade...
July 2010
2 posts
Pricing our small angel round... and hubris vs....
…and we’re back. I hope to get back to regular blogging after the disruptions this last few months. Getting a product out. Family. I have a nice backlog of posts for the coming few weeks which should ease me back into it better than my last attempt to start blogging again. But before I get to those I felt compelled to start with an issue that’s been bugging me. I also...
listening to "NEIL YOUNG - Like A Hurricane... →
This one’s dedicated to @kkjordan …one of the best Neil Young tracks ever
April 2010
3 posts
Live blogging Startup Lessons Learned Conference...
Good breakfast done. Eric Reis up on stage….
…great opening - Eric Reis dismantling all of the myths and misconceptions around lean startup
lean startup is about learning
lean startup doesn’t mean small
lean startup doesn’t mean cheap
lean startup doesn’t mean bootstrapped
lean startup does mean disruptive …I suspect we’re going to see lots of tweets...
All serious entrepreneurs should apply for Open...
It’s been a while with our heads down at Team AppWhirl, with no time for blogging as we got the product out the door. But there couldn’t be a better time to get back to blogging the startup than when reflecting on Friday night’s Open Angel Forum Silicon Valley.
As a regular listener to This Week In Startups, and as supporters of Jason Calacanis’ drive against pay-to-pitch...
March 2010
8 posts
DEMO: AppWhirl lets anybody create their own... →
podcaster:
Everybody should have their own app. That’s the basic idea behind AppWhirl, which allows anyone to create an app for the iPhone to broadcast a stream of news and other information in real time.
Full article over at http://demo.venturebeat.com/2010/03/22/demo-appwhirl-lets-anybody-create-their-own-iphone-app/
I think I’ll wait for AppWhirl for an app for my podcasts… and ignore...
Why the games industry has less to fear than the...
I was intrigued by the title of this article - skeptical of gaming following other media online. But I think it doesn’t follow that because the TV & Music industries have done so badly that gaming will struggle to find their feet too.
The reason gaming will work in a move online is that it’s gaming developers themselves doing it, the creative is moving online. With TV and music...
2 tags
The Lady Gaga Post
I love Lady Gaga. I didn’t want to at first. I was expecting another frothy pop bimbette. But I was wrong. Lady Gaga is a performance artist the likes we haven’t seen since perhaps Madonna in her most creative phase.
She understands her audience to an unparalleled degree - you’re not telling me the refrain “I’ll follow you until you love me, papa” is a...
4 tags
Entrepreneurs Collapse The Wave Function
I’ve come to a satisfying analogy when it comes to an important core-skill of entrepreneurs. True entrepreneurs collapse the wave function.
I am a physicist by training. But long before I ever studied Physics at the University of Leeds I was gripped by quantum mechanics. The picture of the world painted by quantum mechanics, and verified to incredible levels of precision, is famously...
Apologies
Sorry if you came here for Last Week in VC Blogs… I think we’re going to have to do a double week next week as we’re heads down getting ready for launch at DEMO next week, right now.
Instead enjoy the next post as some light reading…
Last Week In VC Blogs: week 9 2010 Feb 28th-March...
This is a summary of VC blog posts (wk 9 2010) based on my list of active VC bloggers - see here or http://www.google.com/reader/shared/richarddjordan (any recommendations for addition welcomed).
We’re changing things a little bit this week, as I figure out the best way of doing this weekly slot, in that we’re going to run to Sunday evening, so this is an eight day week....
Breakfast is back... at least in Silicon Valley.
I arrived here in Silicon Valley in 1999. Dot.Com boom roaring all around me. This was the time of “Breakfast at Buck’s”. Literally. There’s TV evidence to back me up! I was followed around for three weeks for a BBC Documentary (titled something like USA.com) with a scene in the finished product filmed as I had a meeting at a table in Buck’s. I remember...
5 tags
The week in VC Blogs: week 8 2010 Feb 21st-27th
This is a summary of VC blog posts (wk 8 2010) based on my list of active VC bloggers - see here or http://www.google.com/reader/shared/richarddjordan (any recommendations for addition welcomed).
Sunday 21st February 2010
Brad Feld gave over a post to a friend of his in the legal world, on the topic of software patents. He later wrote about his thoughts in Vivek Wadha’s TechCrunch...
February 2010
6 posts
7 tags
Bootstrapping Christmas - an entrepreneur's tale
So, when you start a company and you’re trying to build something really special but in a disciplined Lean-Startup/MVP/CustomerDevelopment kind of way, you spend long periods unpaid. Perhaps another post for another time is to discuss financial planning for an entrepreneurial career, including strategies for periods of both feast and famine.
That means being careful with the family budget...
Handling external factors as an high-tech...
This is a rambling personal entry, and may not be hugely interesting to a lot of you…
Building a company is a lot of hard work. There’s lots of great input out there from experienced entrepreneurs like Eric Reis, Dave McClure, Sean Ellis… basically all the folks on my Startup Helpers google reader list. And there’s a lot of great insight to be gained on the Venture...
“Unread counts cause mental blocks, [David Karp] said, and they’re the reason...”
– this is true of both tumblr and twitter for me. i see what i see and i miss what i miss
Leon Crawl: I talked to David Karp and he said some things about Tumblr (via nickdouglas)
(via fred-wilson)
1 tag
How To Build A Successful Sales Channel
Mark Suster posted about channel sales today. Nice post, as always - I think of all the VC blogs I read his provokes the most desire to respond, so he clearly picks topics well. If you don’t read him you should. Or just subscribe to my VC blogs list on Google Reader.
I’m English originally, so sharing success stories can seem a bit like unseemly bragging, but it’s relevant....
6 tags
The week in VC Blogs: week 7 2010 Feb 14th-20th
This is a summary of VC blog posts (wk 7 2010) based on my list of active VC bloggers - see here or http://www.google.com/reader/shared/richarddjordan (any recommendations for addition welcomed).
In the week that started with Valentine’s day and ended with ice-skating scoring controversy the VC blogging world had this to say:
Sunday 14th Feb 2010
Fred Wilson brought Chat Roulette to...
listening to "Glasvegas-Geraldine" →
@RichardJordan: “just pure awesomeness”