February 2008
66 posts
“The dominant factor for the decline [in paid clicks] was Google’s design,”...”
– James Lamberti, SVP, ComScore via No, the Sky’s Not Falling on Google, Says ComScore | Epicenter from Wired.com (via bijan)
I think that when all of the dust clears on Google, it will be the demand that fell, not Google’s design. But I have no basis for that other then my gut, so just my two...
“Always always always follow your intuition. It’s never wrong (and when it is,...”
– Jack - Twitter (via bijan)
Demand Harvesting (click here) →
Another great post from Sean Ellis at Xobni. I have learned a lot from him in the past few months and this post is just another example of that. It also play very nicely into Fred’s and Josh’s posts about free services. In the end you have to make money from your product and that is where Sean comes in.
“I see little value in drawing attention to something that I do not like....”
– Jakob Lodwick (via marco)
Entrepreneurial Travel
One thing that entrepreneurs have to worry about that our corporate brothers don’t is how and what to spend on travel. Travel is one of those things that you can really waste a lot of money and energy on. I have traveled a lot in the last 8 years (over 200,000 miles per year). So as I fly from Los Angeles to Miami for a carrier show a few of the tips that I have used come to mind:
1....
Free us all
Interesting day. Two of my favorite bloggers Fred Wilson and Josh Kopelman were writing about the “Free” business models. I highly suggest that you read both of them. It is funny because it is something that I was thinking about this weekend.
Currently at SimulScribe we have a premium product with a very premium price. We have looked at a lot of different pricing models but...
Why blist Chose Flex and Flash →
These are the kinds of posts that I really like to read. I find information like this is best to find in the blogs and not traditional media. While I am not a programmer, at the end of the day a lot of what core architecture gets used in my company comes down to decisions that I make. Thanks to the guys at Blist for the post.
daryn:
My friends at blist have built a gorgeous UI using the...
Being Available
I had a really interesting meeting in the Bay Area on Friday with the founder of a company that is just taking off right now.
One of the things that we discussed was how available should a founder/CEO be to the world. He was told by one of those big PR firms (personally I hate big PR firms) that he had to make himself a little more hard to find. I understand what they are trying to do, create...
WatchA great piece on The Big Idea about SimulScribe aired last night.
“1) Always carry a handy explosive to help destroy any bureaucracy which stands...”
– Craig Benson, founder of Cabletron and a fellow Babson College Alum wrote this as a comment on Steve Spinelli’s blog. I love the carry the explosives part. I guess he hates bureaucracy as much as I do.
Being a Parent
As some of you know my wife and I will be having our first child in July. I was chatting with a friend of mine from high school, Jayson Rully over email today.He just had a baby and here is what he said about it:
“Being a dad is so incredible, I won’t even try to explain because words can’t do it justice. You’ll know what I mean soon enough - it all starts the moment your...
“Personally I’d rather take a bullet than live that life.”
– Sean Ellis, from Xobni, speaking about having the problems of an entrepreneur vs. working a normal job. Says it all.
A real entrepreneur day
Yesterday was what I would consider a real “entrepreneur” day. The thing that I find the hardest about being an entrepreneur is the extreme highs and extreme lows that you can experience and how close together they can come.
My day yesterday was a perfect example of that. I started the day on a high getting interviewed by Donny Deutsch. The whole process of going to the set and...
Build vs Buy- Cloud Computing
This is where reading the blogs can really help in the big picture of the business. SimulScribe is in the middle of the cloud computing decision right now. The below by Bijan is just one more great post that helps in the decision making process.
One comment on the below is that we are trying to find with our business where the build vs. buy threshold is for EC2 right now. We can not seem to...
Fred's Head Was In The Cloud This Morning →
This is really great and valuable insite to how some extremely smart people are looking at the cloud. I love the Amazon EC2 model and think that it the best overall solution when you look at true ROI.
fred-wilson:
Last week I posted the following to twitter: We’ve assembled 8 of the top developers we know and are talking about the future of the lamp stack That was not entirely...
Great insight on Silicon Valley
Sean Ellis, whose is currently at Xobni, wrote a really great piece about Silicon Valley in his blog over the weekend, www.startup-marketing.com. I have done business in a lot of places both inside and outside of the US and the energy in Silicon Valley as it exists today is by far the most exciting for entrepreneurs.
I have been extremely fortunate as a outsider to forge some great relationships...
White Meat Dark Meat →
More on the Muni markets that I have been talking about. The more I dig into things myself and read things like this post by Fred Wilson, it becomes clearer that the issues that started with sub-prime mortgage are hurting the liquidity of low-default products like Muni’s. I believe that the hedge funds that were not involved in the sub-prime will make record profits from this recent credit...
I am not alone →
This article in the WSJ today talks about the Auction backed securities market that I was not alone in believing was a safe investment. I like the quote, “We read about all the troubles in the credit markets and said, ‘I’m glad we’re not invested in that stuff.’ It turns out, we were.” I found out the same thing yesterday…
My Sugar Momma
My wife works in film production. She has had a very successful run so far. Her latest move Alvin and the Chipmunks was the highest domestic grossing move for Fox Pictures for 2007 and the 10th highest grossing movie of the year. Well she just got promoted to a VP at Fox (I believe the youngest one) see the article here. Congrats Erin!
“After my haircut was nearing an end - a nearly 60 minute process - Mohammed said...”
– The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (via fred-wilson)
The difference between confidence and arrogance
There was a post about a semi-competitive product, voice to social network, today on TechCrunch. SimulScribe was mentioned as being in the space. I did a quick post in the comment section with a free 30 day trial link because I am always looking for opportunities to get customers and felt this was a good one. Later in the day a employee of our competitor Spinvox who is in both markets...
Obama and Innovation
Late last night I got an email from the Obama campaign, after their 3 state win, asking me to put up a pledge to match a new donor’s donation. I clicked on the link and pledged $100. I was able write a message to the donor and allow the donor to write a message to me.
This morning I received the following note from Ruth M. in Israel:
“Thanks, James! I’m an expat — I live in...
Competition
I am watching the story of Nike on CNBC. It is a really well put together segment on the history of Nike, what an incredible company. What really made me laugh is that every time they break for advertisement one of the commercials is for Under Armor’s new shoes. Kudos to Under Armor for being aggressive, it is always fun to watch the smaller competitor try to take down the legacy leader. ...
Blackberry still down...
Unbelievable that it is still down. Whats more unbelievable is that a network as large as RIM’s Blackberry has such a single point of failure. My tip to the Blackberry tech team is that they need to start reading my blog. I wrote about this exact issue a week ago. If you run a network you have to have islands of operation that can not be effected by each other. This includes your process in...
Why Union Square Ventures is the best →
I wish that they would have invested in SimulScribe, came close but we could just not get over the hump. I follow Fred’s blog and saw this post today. One of the reasons that Fred is so good at the VC business is because he does not care about bullshit, he lives, sleeps and eats the ideas. Check out how he hires, what a great way of cutting out the normal interview crap. Nice job Fred!
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Ebay/Craigslist Opportunity
My full time job is running SimulScribe. I have very strong beliefs at how a entrepreneur has to focus his/her energy on a single company while it is in the hatching stage in order to guarantee success. That said, it does not mean that I do not constantly think about other businesses.
Every time I go on Craigslist and Ebay my entrepreneurial juices start flowing. While both businesses do a...
Obama
Watching him on 60 minutes right now. I like him more and more. Gave him another donation toady, nothing big, $100 but hopefully a lot more people will do the same.
“The Democrats have it exactly wrong. Hillary is the easier candidate, Mr. Obama...”
– Declarations - WSJ.com Who is better equiped to deal with the Republican attack machine? Some think Clinton. Some think Obama. I agree with the WSJ today. (via bijan)