January 2010
25 posts
Awesome Bio
One of the best VC blogs that I follow is Bryce Roberts. He always gives interesting perspectives on things and definitely not the typical VC. I was reading a great post that he had yesterday, “Its not the size of your market, its what you do with it that matter” worth a read but what really caught my attention, which I had missed in the past, was his bio on the site:
I co-founded...
Best Travel App so far
I saw on TechCrunch a post about a new travel itinerary management app called TripTracker. It is like Tripit in that it tracks and keeps your itineraries but it solves a huge problem I had with Tripit, my itineraries change 30-40% of the time. When you have a itinerary change with Tripit you have to manually update it. With TripTracker it is getting the info directly from the airlines so if a...
Voicemail for Haiti
Last week I received a email from someone at the Mobile Giving Foundation, one of the groups involved in the massive fund raising going on using mainly SMS for Haiti. They had a problem, while most of the donations came in through the website and SMS the people calling in overwhelmed their volunteers and ended up in a ton of voicemail.
We were able to get them a PhoneTag account set up (free of...
“Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.”
– Robert Stephens, founder of GeekSquad
I have had the good fortune of spending some time with Robert. Almost every sentence he says is worthy of quoting. He really is one amazing entrepreneur.
via Josh Kopelman
Is Skype "stealing" minutes?
The blogoshere was busy today reporting on Skype’s 2009 minute numbers. In TechCrunch, Report: Skype Now Accounts For 12% Of All International Calling Minutes and GigaOm, Skype Steals Even More Minutes From Phone Companies.
While Skype is doing some pretty amazing things, killing the international market for telephony traffic is not one of them. Telephony traffic on “old...
Speech for ITexpo
Next week I am keynoting the Startup Camp at ITexpo. I am so excited to be part of the event, it was put together by Larry Lisser and is going to be awesome. There are also some really great people involved like Thomas Howe and Andy Abramson.
If you are going to be in Miami for ITexpo or anything else, the event starts around 5:30pm and is at the Miami Beach Convention center.
There are a few...
I feel like a Somali pirate*
When Nuance (Nasdaq: NUAN) bought both Jott and Spinvox it left only two companies capable of supplying voicemail to text to the global market, us (PhoneTag/Ditech) and them. They are a $4.5 billion market cap company, we are a strong public company (Nasdaq: DITC) but compared to Nuance our market cap of around $40 million is 112 times smaller than theirs. Additionally Google and Microsoft have...
Patents are just Nukes
There has been a lot of patent discussion today, starting with Brad from Union Square Ventures post, “We need an independent invention defense to minimize the damage of aggressive patent trolls”
Bijan’s follow on post had the best tidbit, “Trolls are just one end the spectrum. On the other end, patents also favor big companies. In 2007 IBM proudly announced they received...
Using the brakes
Yesterday when I grabbed my mountain bike to go out for a ride I realized that the front brakes were locked up. I tried some quick fixes but do to time and my lack of knowledge of disc brakes I did the quick and dirty and took the front brakes off.
I never realized how much front brakes added to my ride until I almost shot off a cliff. It struck me as ironic that on the rest of the ride I had...
Watch
WatchSimple Slideshow explaining PoketyPoke. Going to be projecting it onto our CES booth in a loop.
Today we launched PoketyPoke
Early in the PhoneTag years I had a conference call scheduled with a major carrier. I had the reminder set up in Outlook and it popped up 15 minutes before the call. After the reminder came up I closed it and started to work on some other things, when I looked back down it was 10 minutes after the start of the call.
So I frantically called into the bridge and as soon as I got on, stated how...
Going to CES!
Well this week will be a crazy one, going from a nice relaxing holiday vacation to the madness of CES in Las Vegas. Ditech is doing CES this year and I will be there for anyone that wants to stop over and see some super cool shit. Our booth is #30351 in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention center.
We have been doing CES, before as PhoneTag, since 2007, so this will be our 3rd year...
“For car buyers, this means more competition on everything from styling to...”
– Detroit Auto Show Reveals New Cars, Industry
Innovation in auto’s between “green” technology and things like Microsoft/Ford Synch are really going to be fun to watch over the next few years. The one somewhat disappointing part about automotive innovation is that because of...
Things startups do and don't need
fred-wilson:
yancey:
cdixon:
Things startups do need
Sunny office
Windows that open
Democratically controlled music system
Two forms of internet access
Beer on fridays
EVDO cards
Video game system
Good coffee maker
Proximity to public transportation
Proximity to park
Heating that goes all night
Health care plans for everyone
Mac laptops with second monitors
Plants
Lots of...