Disqus - Friends of billso

Re: Something About This Song And August

Jay Parkhill — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:11:22 -0000

Nice song. Growing up in Boston going to alt-post-soft-punk-thing shows these were two of my favorites as well, though I liked the "early" Lemonheads better. Nostalgia . . . <sigh>

Re: Heard In An Twitter Post

Jay Parkhill — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:27:20 -0000

"Graph" seems a little wonky and abstract. It doesn't seem to have caught on- I've more commonly heard people talking about the "social map" to describe interpersonal relationship.

"Social network" is more accurate, but it has turned into shorthand for "social networking platform".

In other words, it's all about trying to distinguish an individual's set of contacts from the applications on which they connect. You've talked about this a bunch- interesting that people are having trouble finding the right words to differentiate the two.

Re: What motivates an investor to say “yes”

Jay Parkhill — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:41:34 -0000

I'll add to what Ramon said- another key is to start building the investor-community relationships long before you start trying to raise money.

Find out who invests in your sector and get on their radar so that when you ask for cash they already know who you are.

Easier said than done, of course, but if a VC investment is like a marriage, you need to start the courtship long before you're standing at the altar.

Re: Andreessen on Platforms

Jay Parkhill — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:39:59 -0000

I took the point of Marc's piece to be that on a "Level 3" the developer doesn't have to pay for bandwidth or hosting or worry about scaling very very quickly when Facebook-style superviral adoption happens. Developers still need to pay for Amazon services, so even though it lets them scale very quickly they still need the checkbook to support it.

He has a valid point- if you don't have a revenue stream to support your traffic then an "all you can eat" Level 3 platform makes a lot of sense.

OTOH, I suspect that people haven't been building Level 3 platforms all along because it takes more work to convince developers to use them if they are going to be "locked in".

Re: CleanScores tells you if your favorite restaurant is clean

Jay Parkhill — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:51:14 -0000

Avast, mateys, 'tis a plan worthy of a pirate.

But what if the restaurant puts up its *own* placard and skips the fee?

Or some other scurvy dog offers to post the same public data for a lower fee?

Aarr. Methinks CleanScores needs to rethink its business model.

Re: Parallel Universes

Jay Parkhill — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:53:35 -0000

The FB New York Times quiz app is what keeps me coming back these days.

It's quite clever- compete with your friends, but you have to read the news to do well, and NYT offers lots of chances to link to the articles.

P.S. I guess the horizontal plays you've talked about help bridge among parallel universes?

Re: Web 3.Oh- God- Will- This- Silly- Versioning- Never- Stop?!!

Jay Parkhill — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:39:18 -0000

It isn't web 3.0. It's Web2008.

Re: Irrationally Exuberant Ethanol

Jay Parkhill — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 21:45:54 -0000

A client of mine- who makes organic Indian food, not fuel- told me recently that her biodegradable packaging is "corn free". Enter the corn backlash on the heels of the ethanol backlash.

Re: Ben Kweller is 26

Jay Parkhill — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:12:34 -0000

I just checked out Ben. Nice-thanks for the tip. He reminds me of Brendan Benson too, though I might like Ben a little better- Brendan seems too caught up in devising clever wordplay.

Re: Wearing A Lot Of Hats

Jay Parkhill — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:51:57 -0000

That is what makes life interesting, though, isn't it? I realized the other day that I spend almost 1 hour every day working on volunteer stuff for my kids' schools on top of parenting, blogging, bike racing and earning a living. I know plenty of people who put all their time & energy into work and it just doesn't seem as satisfying. Or maybe it's that I've never been good at focusing on just one thing.

Re: WYWIWYG vs. WYSIWYG

Jay Parkhill — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:07:59 -0000

Back when I used to work more closely with developers I learned the important phrase "just what I asked for but not what I wanted". I think this is what happens when WYW isn't perfectly articulated- which is probably 99.9% of the time.

If Defrag is about addressing that communication gap then I can definitely see the appeal.

Re: Your Revenue Forecast Is Wrong

Jay Parkhill — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:19:24 -0000

This is such a thorny area. From my vantage point of helping clients assemble their business plans I also believe creating a business/financial model is more about the process than the results.

On the other hand, I recently attended an event where a VC-turned-entrepreneur said his first investor go-round showed modest early growth. He said (to VCs he knew) "come on, everyone knows the hockey stick almost never actually happens."

He was declined, revised the model to show higher, faster growth and prospective investors sat up and said "now this sounds interesting". So perhaps there's a certain amount of "playing the game" involved as well- at least with a portion of the investor community.

Re: Data vs. Facts

Jay Parkhill — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 02:32:17 -0000

Good point, but Greg Lemond made it better many years ago in his book on bike racing. He would see young athletes mimic the training styles of their heroes and do badly, and summed it up by saying "what works for ___ is good because it works for ___. It doesn't mean it is necessarily good for you".

Re: Hercules slaps The Funded with “Cease and Desist”

Jay Parkhill — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:33:16 -0000

The comment could be entirely wrong and slanderous, but Hercules needs to go after the poster- perhaps by subpoenaing Thefunded's IP address records.

Under the CDA, sites are not liable for third-party comments- at least according to 95% of the courts that have ruled on it.

And of course, Hercules has just turned a single point of data few are likely to read into a major piece of negative publicity on the firm. Doh.

They should have just ignored it, or gotten their portfolio companies to bury it with positive reviews.

Re: Bringing The Web Into Our Living Room

Jay Parkhill — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:32:14 -0000

I've been looking for something that will synchronize iPhoto the way Request does iTunes. In my house photos get uploaded to 1 Mac, but I'd like to share them with other PCs and Macs machines in the house. Does anyone have a suggestion for this? Many thanks.

Re: Thinking About Non-Competes

Jay Parkhill — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:45:30 -0000

California doesn't exactly fail to recognize the issue. It won't enforce flat-out non-compete restrictions, but it does say that an employee can't use confidential information belonging to employer A in the service of employer B- including things like customer lists, business plans and products plans as well as technical "IP".

To people accustomed to the more stringent restriction available in other states this probably sounds loosy-goosy, but it actually gets pretty close to the same place. It may cause real-world problems a bit more often than in MA or NY (for example), but in percentage terms I'd be willing to bet the difference is pretty minor.

In Fred's example Employer A can advise Employer B that VP Sales is under a confidentiality obligation. Especially in startup contexts, the offer letter gets rescinded pretty quickly- in part because the (smart) letter itself makes VP Sales affirm that she is not under any confidentiality restrictions.

Re: Thinking About Non-Competes

Jay Parkhill — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:45:31 -0000

We are saying the same thing. The point of your original post, I think, was that a blanket non-compete puts an extra burden on employees when the NDA restrictions accomplish the practical objective. My comment above attempted to agree with you- the NDA gets the job done in most cases.

Re: Getting Blown Away

Jay Parkhill — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:38:13 -0000

One of my all-time favorite quotes was where Neil talked about how musicians generally mellow as they get older, but he's gone the opposite direction- from folk-rock with Buffalo Springfield, through CSNY and eventually on to stuff like Rust and the Arc Weld 40-minutes-of-feedback record. He's a legend for sure.

Re: The Pain of Change

Jay Parkhill — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 13:56:27 -0000

Trainingpeaks.com kills it. It's $20/month, but nothing else I've found has nearly the analytical ability. Happy running!

Re: Customer service in Silicon Valley? Who’d have thought

Jay Parkhill — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:59:03 -0000

I don't think Silicon Valley companies forget about customer service- a culture has developed of treating it as "optional".

Satisfaction has a huge opportunity based on the unfilled need and universal complaints. Everyone knows the system is broken, but no one seems willing to risk their margins on a solution.

Re: n. todd wickersty - Installing The Perfect Tumblr Search

Jay Parkhill — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:18:23 -0000

Can't figure this out. I keep getting text that says "search" instead of a box. Is there an html/css for dummies guide somewhere? Thx

Re: [bijansabet.com] the personal tumblelog of Bijan Sabet

Jay Parkhill — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:58:29 -0000

Not to sound too philosophical/abstract, but as with many things, it's a lot easier to see what we are giving up than to visualize what we stand to gain from making changes.

Or to put it in more concrete terms "no one ever got fired for leaving in the non-compete clause".

I agree with you though and applaud your efforts to make this a discussion point.

Re: [bijansabet.com] the personal tumblelog of Bijan Sabet

Jay Parkhill — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:06:43 -0000

Crucial is amazingly cheap. 2GB MicroSD card for $15! Thanks for that.

On a related Apple/overpricing note, it was new phone time and I ran the math for the first time btwn Blackberry & iPhone. AT&T's iPhone data plan is $20 more than for other phones, so it came out to:

Curve - $99
iPhone - $399 + (24*20)= $900

I'm sure I'm not breaking any great news here, but it still surprised me. $800 difference. Sheesh.

Re: Umair On Digital Music

Jay Parkhill — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:19:45 -0000

That's an interesting viewpoint. When I was a teenager I would buy tapes or CDs just because I liked the album cover or name of the band. I'm not willing to take that risk on music anymore . . . Don't know where that leaves me, except that I understand the risk point.

Re: Carbonite, online backup service for consumers, raises $5.2M more

Jay Parkhill — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:12:09 -0000

Carbonite is a really great name for a storage business- unless *your* name is Han Solo.