September 2009
21 posts
Please be true!
Looks like my favorite service of all time, Clear, might be coming back. NYT article here. I hope this is true, I would sign back up for the service in a second.
How do you know if you are wasting time?
I reposted a quote yesterday about how entrepreneurs work too hard on things that might not matter from one of the founders of Flickr. Bryce, a friend and fellow entrepenuer (founder of www.taskus.com), wrote the below as a comment to that post:
As a young entrepreneur I have been really surprised by how many of my mentors have made this same point. The wisest people I know can point to two or...
“When we were building Flickr, we worked very hard. We worked all waking hours,...”
– Caterina Fake - Working hard is overrated - Sept 25, 2009
Startups are hard. They require an insane amount of hard work and stress. But I like how Caterina calls out the difference between freaking out vs working hard.
(via bijan)
“Obviously coming here as a guest two months earlier and then becoming a...”
– Scott Gould in Tuesday’s WSJ
There is so much about this quote that I love.
“A friend has pointed to the irony of the Kazaa IPR owners claiming foul over...”
– Carl Ford
I find the whole Skype IP battle too weird. How did the execs/lawyers at eBay not get all of the IP on a multi billion dollar deal. Additionally Carl does have a really funny point that the guys that built the most successful IP theft system are now enforcing theirs…
What a great week, first PhoneTag was on TWIT and...
WatchA few months ago PhoneTag donated $10,000 to CharityWater for an ad on the TWIT Podcast. Leo Laporte is by far my favorite person to follow in the tech world and being on his podcast was a blast.
Taking it to the next level
Today we, SimulScribe/PhoneTag, announced a very big partnership with Ditech Networks (nasdaq:DITC). In fact, it is the single largest deal in my business career. Post from TechCrunch here. This post is going to be a bit long as I really want everyone to understand why we/I did this deal and the market forces that drove us to look for a partner. Why did we(SimulScribe) do this deal with Ditech?...
“i think that is why i took exception to a portion of Paul Graham’s - The Anatomy...”
– Bijan
I could not agree more!
8 tags
Location services just got bigger then big...
When I was reading TechCrunch this weekend I saw a post by MG Siegler, “Background Location Finds A Loop(t)hole On The iPhone”. At first I thought that Loopt had found a way of running a background apps on the iPhone, which would be cool. But as I read on I realized that the years biggest technological announcement was buried in this article.
For a long time it has been...
Free form interaction
I have written a few posts (here and here) in the last few months about my gripes with company surveys. Beyond just customers surveys I have started to broaden my thinking around overall customer interaction with a company.
Just the other day I got an email from Jetblue after my flight “from the CEO” but in reality it was at one of those no-reply emails asking me how my flight was. ...
Best Entrepreneurship/VC Tumblr Blogs
My friend David put this list together of entreprenuer/VC blogs. If you are interested in start-up stuff this is a great list to follow:
Bijan (VC at Spark Capital, Bijan actually was the first tumblelog I followed)
Mike Hudack (CEO of Blip.tv, the Bo Duke of reblogs)
Jamie (Founder of PhoneTag and Grid)
Scott Rafer (serial entrepreneur and founder of several -ery companies)
Albert...
Selling Citizenship
One of the problems that US has in really pulling out its economic issues is a simple supply and demand issue with real estate. There are way too many homes/condos/etc. that were built in the economic run up to be soaked up by the market. This is especially true in places like Miami, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc.
One creative way to increase demand would be to sell a special type of US...
Is Unemployment really 10%?
Currently in the US unemployment is listed as being 9.7%, which is a pretty scary number. However as I continue to travel around the US for business and pleasure as well as my experiences in my hometown of LA I have to question is that number really correct.*
Here are a few thoughts on figuring out the “real” number and impact of it for unemployment.
1. How many are working on...
This should be Verizon's next marketing push
I never trash companies on this blog… but ATT’s mobile network is so bad that I do not think that I am pointing out anything negative, it is just fact.
On ATT’s network (specifically in CA, NY and every other place I seem to travel to…) it is hard to talk for more then 10-15 minutes without having the call fail. If you leave 3G turned then it turns your phone into...