Serial vs. collective board communication
Board communication has been the topic of a handful of conversations over the past few weeks as several of the companies I work with have grappled with both the right level of communication as well as the correct forum for certain board level discussions and decisions. Although there are a handful venues in which boards communicate, fundamentally they fall into one of two categories: conversations between a subset of the board (often just the CEO and an individual board member) and those that involve the full board. While there are some decisions that must clearly be made by the full board at properly noticed board meetings (and documented as such) there are many more day-to-day decisions that either do not, or fall into a gray area where gaining board ‘consensus’ might be accomplished in different ways (or may not even be required at all). …
March 21, 2008· 4 min read
Sonos has guts
If you’ve read this blog for a while, you already know that I’m crazy about my Sonos system. Time has only increased my love of the product, which is on in our house pretty much non-stop when someone is home. Today I was pointed to a TeardownTV video of Sonos. It’s definitely geeky, but if you’re into taking a look at what’s under the hood of electronics devices (but like me wouldn’t even consider taking your very own Sonos apart for fear of never getting it back together again) you’ll love it. For me the video underscores just how well thought out the Sonos system is – there’s an unbelievable amount going on inside the sleek Sonos boxes but it’s internal design and lay-out is, as you’d expect from them, extremely elegant. Enjoy!
March 18, 2008· 1 min read
Apple juice
This is a shameless request for help from anyone out there who has a good Apple connection. I’m trying to make the switch over to the iPhone. So far I love it – the interface is great (intuitive in a way that only Apple seems to be able to perfect) and the touch screen typing isn’t nearly the challenge that friends suggested it would be. There are a few things that I’d love to see improved (dial by name, full inbox delete, longer battery life . . . etc.) but they are minor compared to my major problem – lack of exchange sync. …
March 17, 2008· 1 min read
Closing the top of the world
China has effectively closed off Mt. Everest peak attempts this year by baring teams from being on the mountain between March and June (which effectively closes off the window for an attempt from the Tibet side this year). All of this is apparently in reaction to protests in recent years over Tibeten independence and the plan to have the olympic torch scale the mountain during that time period on its approach to China for the games (apparently the Chinese would prefer not to have the torch run into protesters this year). Yikes! …
March 13, 2008· 1 min read
The 6 / 50 rule of internet advertising
comScore and behavioral ad network Tacoda released a study last month that caught my eye. It at least partially answers the question that I’m sure most regular internet users have asked themselves at one time or another: “who the heck actually clicks on these banner ads anyway?!?". Turns out that about 6% of users are “heavy clickers” in the study’s parlance. These users generate about 50% of the total banner clicks. The study points out that these users are heavily skewing banner click-through data. They are also not representative of the overall internet population (heavy clickers according to the study are between the ages of 25 and 44 with household incomes less than $40k; they spend a lot of time on-line, but they don’t tend to spend a whole lot more than other users online – their clicking behavior isn’t indicative of spending behavior).Its worth taking a read of the press release which summarized the findings from their work – fascinating. …
March 13, 2008· 2 min read
The bird is cold
Yahoo launched a private version of what they are calling FireEagle – a service that allows you to track your location to be shared with applications that build to the FireEagle API – its basically a location “broker” (for self reported location). I’m a big fan of location based services (we’re investors of IP geo-information company Quova and geo-spatial platform company deCarta), so the idea of a common platform upon which to build location aware applications. Through Quova, we’re small investors in Navizon who has a similar dev platform to FireEagle. …
March 6, 2008· 2 min read
Finding your technical founder
I hear a version of this question a lot (like the one below today from Dawn): I talked to a firm that really likes my business plan but thinks I should have a technical co-founder. SIGH Any ideas how I could find a really good tech guy, preferably with some cache??? While not every business needs a technical co-founder, many (most) benefit from some early technical vision that is unlikely to be provided by the business founder. So where do you find these people that can code, help refine your technical vision and check the technical cache box? Here are a couple of ideas. …
March 4, 2008· 3 min read
Taking a break once in a while
If you’ve at all been trying to unplug once in a while – as I have been to mixed success, you’ll enjoy this article from last Sunday’s NY Times.
March 4, 2008· 1 min read
To stealth or not to stealth
We’ve announced four initial Foundry investments (Lijit, Memeo, Oblong and Zynga) – in press releases by the companies, on our personal blogs or on the new Foundry web site. Truth be told, we’ve made a fifth investment which we’re not talking about much. That’s because it’s in “stealth” mode (shhhh). There are varying degrees of stealth, ranging from companies that won’t tell anyone what they are up to, to companies (like the one I’m referring to)that don’t have a web site and haven’t made any announcement of their business intentions or funding but aren’t hiding what they are doing in daily industry conversations, etc. This stands in stark contrast to companies (such as Path 101), which are all buy live blogging their board meetings and actively talking about their product and development plans. …
February 26, 2008· 3 min read
Love revisited
I don’t write much about my kids on this blog – a little too personal and ultimately my wife and I think they should decide what and when they want to share online. I couldn’t resist this one, however. A few years ago I wrote about my own overwhelming feelings of love for my kids. Its great when they can return the sentiment! Below is a note from my 4 year old daughter. My wife helped her with the spelling, but she drew all the letters and picked the words herself. …
February 25, 2008· 1 min read