Disqus - Latest Comments for jasonlbaptiste

Re: No Stack Startups

Jason L. Baptiste — Thu, 14 May 2015 15:07:57 -0000

Hey, I think we're saying the same thing. I believe the way it has been done is dying...fast.

Re: No Stack Startups

Jason L. Baptiste — Thu, 14 May 2015 14:27:50 -0000

I love what YouTubers have done. What I've been wondering is - how do we make this possible for all types of content, not just video creators? ie- if someone were to start a publication today from scratch and do what YouTubers have done, how would they do it? There's youtube for video, but there's nothing else really for article and other kinds of content. I think the buying a domain name, setting up a Wordpress site, selling banner ads way of the world is fading fast.

Re: No Stack Startups

Jason L. Baptiste — Thu, 14 May 2015 10:49:53 -0000

First, I think there are two important parts of the "non-stack" - infrastructure and distribution.

Infrastructure might be things like Twilio, Diffbot, Plaid, Stripe, Layer, etc. It's crazy not to build on top of these platforms in 2015. Even deep vertical applications like Robinhood are using infrastructure like Plaid. I think it's a straight forward yes that startups should be building on top of the infrastructure non-stack.

Distribution, on the other hand has always been a tricky part of the non-stack, but it's now at an interesting nexus. For the past 20 years, we always had the web as the creation platform, which was open as the source of where most people consumed content. You would type in a URL and that's where people would go. The truth is, the world isn't consuming content on the web as much anymore. Most people, especially in younger demographics are spending their time on Snapchat, SMS, Instagram, Twitter, WeChat, etc. With the web gone as where people are spending time, it looks like the distribution AND creation platforms are meshing together. So why would you try to build an audience where people aren’t spending their time anymore?

Take an example I’ve seen lately from a good friend starting a new media company - https://twitter.com/elmayimbe
. He’s the most followed individual that breaks “scoops and news” on comic book movies from Marvel, DC, Star Wars, etc. - think Kara Swisher of Fictional Entertainment He recently left the website he co-founded after it was acquired to strike it out on his own. He’s launching a new website, but in the mean time he’s been posting news and concept art to Instagram. His following on Instagram has gone from 0 -19,000 in a few weeks. He holds weekly Q&As on Periscope and Twitter that get thousands of live viewers. I suspect that his Instagram and Periscope following will be more impactful than the new website he builds - it’s where his audience and almost everyone else’s is. So what should he and others be worried about?

Monetization opportunity - How can anyone make money off these platforms as entrepreneurs? Right now Instagram and Snapchat have no way for entrepreneurs to do this. There are hacks around it, but there’s no clarity on whether it’s deemed okay by the powers that be.

The kill switch - The Shade Room was accidentally deleted the other night. It’s fine now, but that shows the power these platforms have. Whether you agree with Twitter’s treatment of devs, I do respect how clear they were with what types of businesses you should or shouldn’t build. Other platforms need to explicitly state what they will and will not tolerate, then follow it.

Analytics and insights - This is important for all entrepreneurs. They need to understand their audience. How can he get better insights and analytics into what his audience likes? We saw this as an important sticking point for publishers with Facebook Instant Articles and I think it will be for many non-stack startups.

In reality, there will be many platforms to move between to hedge risk, but that’s a burden for content creators. Eventually a dominant platform emerges for distribution - content creators optimized for Google and that’s really about it, when it came to search. I think there’s an opportunity right now for one of the big players (Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) or a new player to be friendly to content creators - give them analytics, give them monetization, and have a bill of creators rights that draws a line in the sand of what’s okay. The next big distributor of content and where many no-stack startups make there home will be a combination of distribution and a creation platform (traditionally what was the open web). Most importantly, they will empower and partner with the creator. In my mind, it looks like what Tumblr would be if it were founded in 2015 - dashboard (for distribution) and creation engine all in one place. It’s a more closed world, but it ends up being a more convenient experience for consumers.

Re: Hyperlocal Mesh Networks

Jason L. Baptiste — Sun, 24 Aug 2014 20:06:44 -0000

I think of it like this - if we were to build a new city or colonize another planet, we likely wouldn't lay fiber underground. We'd use something like mesh networks as they're cheaper, software upgradeable, and take advantage of everyone being a beacon with devices in their pocket. I undoubtedly believe the Comcast of our generation will be based off of mesh networks. We all have "nodes" sitting in our pockets now.

My biggest question has always been around the multi hop problem. There's been some good research papers on it (http://www.strixsystems.com..., but we're talking a much larger scale here. This is where a big software advance needs to happen. My one worry is that since it plays into radio frequencies, you're looking at potential government oversight. Solve this and make it way for thousands of red hooks to spring up and you're looking at the future.

If you're interested in further reading, there's a great subreddit here that I follow - http://www.reddit.com/r/dar... .

Re: Are Tablet Friendly Tools Like OnSwipe Stealing Traffic From your Site? No – check the comments from user

Jason L. Baptiste — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 11:31:22 -0000

Hey Ritz,

This is clearly not true, sorry if we did not see your support request. If you go into your Onswipe dashboard, you can set your Google Analytics ID - http://cl.ly/image/0i0V2v3i.... If this isn't set, you won't see it reporting into your account. We also support: Chartbeat, Quantcast, Comscore, and Omniture. We work with many of the largest publishers in the world and frankly we'd be out of business if we didn't support+report their analytics :). Hope this helps, thank you!

Re: Stop believing the fairy tales about the iPad’s demise

Jason L. Baptiste — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 10:12:20 -0000

Yep, that's what we expect is happening.

For clarity, we measure traffic worldwide and are the largest independent media platform according to Comscore. It's a large data set.

Re: Stop believing the fairy tales about the iPad’s demise

Jason L. Baptiste — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 08:42:11 -0000

Competition is great and Samsung is a real threat. The iPad has always been at a great price though - $499 is unbelievable and since then they've gone down to offer a model for $200 less. I don't see this as a price game. It's an ecosystem and quality game

Re: Stop believing the fairy tales about the iPad’s demise

Jason L. Baptiste — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 08:40:08 -0000

I think the nexus 7 is a GREAT experience. $200 isn't cheap. A $59 tablet... that is cheap and many if these "others" exist.

Re: Stop believing the fairy tales about the iPad’s demise

Jason L. Baptiste — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 08:38:48 -0000

I'd keep kindle hd as tablet. Paper white as ereader

Re: Bijan Sabet - Collaboration

Jason L. Baptiste — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:22:47 -0000

I think this is a really neat feature for writers. I've always been a fan of not only reading Paul's essays, but looking at who he thanks at the end for proofreading. I'd love to have seen the evolution of the essays and thoughts along the way from the collaborators.

Internal tool we use a lot is Hackpad (YCombinator backed). It allows all of us to collaborate in real time, take notes during a meeting, and see who contributed where. Same logic, just for non public writing.

Re: Raw Story introduces its first mobile app (for iPad and iPhone)

Jason L. Baptiste — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 00:08:42 -0000

Good question! We hear ya and Android is something we think is important. Stay tuned for Android awesomeness...

Re: Raw Story introduces its first mobile app (for iPad and iPhone)

Jason L. Baptiste — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 00:07:46 -0000

Stay tuned for Android soon, we hear you. We just want to make sure we deliver a great experience.

Re: Raw Story introduces its first mobile app (for iPad and iPhone)

Jason L. Baptiste — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 00:07:05 -0000

:) We hope you like it a lot and if you ever have any feedback, you can email me as well on the Onswipe side (founder here). j@onswipe.com

Re: Two Year Startup ‘Apprenticeship’ Program: Innovative or Exploitative?

Jason L. Baptiste — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:41:54 -0000

Let's break this down objectively:

Disclosure: Enstitute works out of our offices and we gave it to them for free. They've only ever bought us lunch today in return, but the nacho chips were stale by the time I got to them. They're also good friends.

The largest costs of living in NYC for a 20 something is easily housing. That's covered.

The other major costs such as food and transportation? Covered.

Other cash in order to enjoy NYC? Covered by a stipend, which I'm sure is small.

If all they were providing was the opportunity and zero costs covered, I'd get the slant, but that's not the case. In reality this is probably more than an individual founder would be getting in their pocket from YCombinator or Techstars (excluding the 150k / 100k convertible notes).

Also, the members of the program can leave if they want and I'm sure some of the students will get snagged up fast by the companies they're with.

Re: On To The Next One

Jason L. Baptiste — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:51:56 -0000

It was an honor having you with us from day one growing the operations from when it was just Andres and I in January to 16 people strong . Thanks for believing in us over the past 8 months to be a part of the wild ride. Love you man.

Re: Scripting News: OnSwipe

Jason L. Baptiste — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:43:45 -0000

Was great meeting you that morning too at Techstars. Appreciate the feedback and figured it would be good to address a few of the points.

Glad you like Brad's blog and its look+feel. A lot of that layout was inspired by your comment to focus on readability of content. We want the web to be more enjoyable and focus on the reading experience.

We'd love for you to show everybody Brad's blog, but what we're doing doesn't work on the desktop. It works only on tablet touch (right now iPad) web browsers. You should have been redirected to the desktop version if accessing from Safari on the desktop.

As for the Wordpress implementation, our goal is to make that experience a lot more like Brad's blog. What's up on Wordpress now is older technology. The new technology you see on Brad's blog, WILL make its way to Wordpress and very soon hopefully. It would have been there by now, but it is literally not even a week old. We're on it, we hear you, and it will happen.

Re: The Magic of Onswipe on an iPad

Jason L. Baptiste — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:43:31 -0000

Brad, thanks for the awesome post and support along the way. We originally built Onswipe for people like you: personal publishers that want their content to look great on the tablet web without any work.

Re: The Magic of Onswipe on an iPad

Jason L. Baptiste — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:42:09 -0000

Thanks Greg, your support has always meant a lot! Tumblr support is already there :).

ps- we need to sync that meetup. Last week was a blur :o

Re: http://leftovertakeout.com/post/4715840745

Jason L. Baptiste — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:53:07 -0000

Greg- thank you for the kind words, they made me smile :).

Re: What Is Your Minimum Viable Market?

Jason L. Baptiste — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 15:05:09 -0000

Craigslist- SF
Foursquare- NYC and a handful of others
Facebook- Harvard
Tumblr- avant garde crowd
Twitter (and a plethora of other services)- Tech crowd
Myspace- hollywood crowd

I'll think of others. hope this helps.

-jlb
772.801.1058
CEO of OnSwipe
You Should Check Out My Writing at OnStartups.com <http: onstartups.com=""/>
and JasonLBaptiste.com <http: www.jasonlbaptiste.com=""/>

Re: Doing The Top Of Mind Drill At TechStars New York

Jason L. Baptiste — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 12:35:09 -0000

Brad, was awesome to have you come by. Top of mind was really useful for us as a growing company trying to be the best founders possible. Many many thanks again. Looking forward to having you on board as an alpha user :).

Re: Mobile Transition

Jason L. Baptiste — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:06:54 -0000

The point and click web still has a lot left in it, but the innovation and more time is probably going to be spent on mobile/touch devices. Part of it because of the huge growth of the devices, but also because it's just a lot more fun for developers to build on. I think we'll soon hit a topping point where users look down on an app/site if it doesn't have a mobile counterpart.

Re: HP Holding webOS Special Event February 9 In San Francisco

Jason L. Baptiste — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:17:09 -0000

No worries. My guess is miss CES and miss the Apple announcement at the end of January.

-jlb
772.801.1058
You Should Check Out My Writing at OnStartups.com and JasonLBaptiste.com

Re: HP Holding webOS Special Event February 9 In San Francisco

Jason L. Baptiste — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:12:14 -0000

Hey I think you mean January 9 is the last day of CES.

Re: “How We BootStrapped PadPressed To Our First 10k In Sales” – with Jason L Baptiste

Jason L. Baptiste — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:34:53 -0000

Zferral is absolutely awesome, people should check them out. We may still release flow as open source software.