We recently closed an angel round a couple of weeks ago, and I thought that I’d share my thoughts on the process. As a first-time entrepreneur, you will initially be judged by proxy. The main criteria people will use to evaluate you and your business is what other people think about you and your business. Frustrating? [...]
When we were first getting started, I kept wondering about the value of advisors. Every company proudly displays their advisors somewhere in their about us (and so do we). But I couldn’t quite understand what, exactly, advisors brought to the table. Were they primarily intended as a signaling mechanism? For introductions? For domain experience? After a couple [...]
We’re used to seeing long-tail requests over here, but last week we had a request that surprised even us: I am looking for a professional makeup artist to transform me and my friends into the blue Na’vi people from Avatar for the morning of the bay to breakers race. I’m guessing this will involve some [...]
The Type Directors Club asked a group of designers to create posters based off of classified ads. You’re not going to find these on a nearby telephone pole: See the original classified here. (via Kottke)
Paul Krugman: So here is a speculation: The time may come when most tax lawyers are replaced by expert systems software, but human beings are still needed–and well paid–for such truly difficult occupations as gardening, house cleaning, and the thousands of other services that will receive an ever-growing share of our expenditure as mere consumer [...]
David Gelernter, in his Edge essay: It has always been harder to find the right person than the right fact. Human experience and expertise are the most valuable resources on the Internet — if we could find them. I would go further and say that human experience and expertise are the most valuable resources our [...]
Last night we were fortunate enough to be invited to pitch at Open Angel Forum‘s first San Francisco event. It was awesome. Jason and Tyler did an incredible job vetting 100+ applications — the quality of the start-ups they invited was top-notch and spanned everything from a high-tech algorithmic photo-tagging company to novel iPhone [...]
February 17, 2010 – 10:29 pm
Matt Galigan of SimpleGeo had a great comment on Chris Dixon’s post on the “geo stack” the other day: I definitely think that the price of venue data (much like the prices of apps in general) is going to be a very quick race to the bottom. There are very few “big” players in this space: [...]
February 16, 2010 – 6:39 pm
Hunter S. Thompson calls tech support about his home entertainment system: (contains profane language) I’m not sure even Zappos’ epic customer service efforts could have talked him down. (via fimoculous)
February 10, 2010 – 7:57 pm
Peter Krasilovsky reports: IAC’s ServiceMagic reported today that it saw a 51 percent boost in 4Q revenue, growing from $25.3 million in 2008 to $38.2 million in 2009. The boost was accompanied by a 21 percent growth in the number of home and trade providers that pay for its leads; and a 46 percent gain in service [...]