Disqus - Latest Comments for jasonoliver

Re: Leave it to China to come up with a Pinterest clone for social shopping | VentureBeat

jasonoliver — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:20:06 -0000

just an fyi, but the Fa Xian in the eTao service does in fact mean discover, but is completely different from Faxian, the Buddhist monk you reference via wikipedia link. There are probably a dozen words for both "fa" and "xian" in Chinese so typing Faxian into google probably wasn't the best idea for finding an alternate meaning. It was a good try though!

Re: Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole)

jasonoliver — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:04:40 -0000

great read, & glad you were able to get that off your chest sir.

Re: Rumor: Tencent Invests $60million in Okbuy.com Series C Financing

jasonoliver — Thu, 19 May 2011 18:42:50 -0000

i believe they invested $84mm in eLong, the chinese online travel site backed by Expedia

Re: Innovation Works – Revisit

jasonoliver — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:38:03 -0000

the idea itself is worthless. it is the execution and product and teams ability to adapt to userbase that will lead to long-term growth and success. sina weibo might be considered a twitter clone, but it has since evolved to have much richer and more social functionality than even twitter, and is directly catered to Chinese user habits and preferences. calling Innovation Works a Clone Factory is meaningless - none of these startups will be successful if all they do is clone. they need to innovate and adapt to build value, as is the case in any country/market.

Re: Chinese Online Video Company PPLive Raises A Whopping $250 Million

jasonoliver — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:01:19 -0000

PPTV is how most Chinese people watch pirated streams of American movies and TV shows in China..... AND the US. My parents now use it instead of Netflix streaming. As long as you can read Chinese, it is an awesome and super easy to use service to not pay for premium content.

Re: Stealth Y Combinator Opzi Gets Serious Angel Attention

jasonoliver — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 06:42:56 -0000

+1, Euwyn is a friend and it is inspiring to see someone move from corporate law to the startup side, especially given the current state of the legal industry. good luck at tc disrupt next week!

Re: Outbound VC Dialing Programs – Total Disrespect for Entrepreneurs

jasonoliver — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:18:24 -0000

Great post Mark. It's awesome that GRP is giving Kelly the opportunity to taste the startup side of life in a product management role. I personally spent 2 years working in a collaborative environment at FirstMark Capital in NYC, and had the chance to spend some time with a couple of our NY-based portfolio companies to better understand the spaces I was sourcing startups in. I then left the junior VC world to head over to our LA-based portfolio co Riot Games, and after spending 1 year in product management, have moved on to managing our international publishing business. As someone very interested in getting back on the investor side later in my career, I think that the day to day at Riot has been invaluable in understanding how startups operate, and ultimately what startups need to do to achieve success (which is what investors need to guide their startups on, and why not having operating experience is perceived as a minus - yes I am from the Dave McClure school of thought on that front). In any case, I also know a lot of young smart people who just want to get into VC, and oftentimes, the easiest way to get a foot in the door is through one of these sourcing programs. Thanks for the thoughtful post and for shedding some light on this not-often-talked about VC industry issue.

Re: - This is going to be BIG! - Logic of the Lemmings: Making sense of the VC pile-ons

jasonoliver — Thu, 27 May 2010 21:03:01 -0000

are you going to keep mentioning the diaspora guys until they take frc money??? haha i kid. great observations on vc pile-ons though. in my spare time out here, i am busy cooking up the perfect geolocation based group buying service aggregating ipad app that leverages the virtual goods model. i think there are a few VCs who missed out on the Foursquare/Gowalla/SimpleGeo/Gilt/Groupon/Living Social/Zynga/Playdom/Crowdstar boat that will all be over it.

on a separate note, hope all is well in NYC! let me know if you are ever out here in socal and i would love to catch up.

Re: The Case for Four

jasonoliver — Thu, 27 May 2010 20:47:38 -0000

Jeff, as an employee at a growing startup myself, i love the suggestion in your post's comments section about new grants each year w/2 year vesting. I can see the argument for short-term option comp as a substitute for cash bonuses, and the argument for longer vesting schedules in initial comp packages. that being said, not sure VCs will be up for creating option pools > 30-40% in Series A rounds in order to support this model.

Re: The Case for Four

jasonoliver — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:52:33 -0000

a very interesting topic, that especially hits home since i formerly sat on the VC side at FirstMark and am now on the startup side at Riot Games. Jeff's point was that stock option grants for employees should vest on an 8 year schedule - this doesn't impact founders at all since they should own common stock from the outset. stock option grants are a way to attract talented employees, and are especially valuable if the company cannot pay high cash compensation and instead needs to rely on lower salaries combined with the future value of stock to attract talented individuals.

as someone coming into a startup, i would actually prefer to have an 8 year vesting schedule ASSUMING the actual package compensates for the fact that the vesting schedule is twice as long (definitely not a safe assumption from the VC side haha). I would rather have 50k options vest over 8 years with a 12.5% cliff than have 25k options vest over 4 years with a 25% cliff. reason being, if the company kicks ass, its valuation will rise and its stock option strike prices will rise as well. I would rather lock in more stock at a cheaper price than risk getting less value out of future options granted at a future date (this assumes staying almost a decade, but there could also be accelerated vesting haha)

This would only work for senior hires that it might make sense to keep around long-term (again, hard to justify, especially in a super early stage company). also, the VC argument would be that they would never 2x a stock option pool size just to get longer vesting, so it would likely be more like 30k options over 8 years vs. 50k (albeit with a higher cliff). again, this only works if the company is kicking ass. if not, then it is all moot. in any case, thanks to you and jeff for providing great dialogue on an interesting topic.

Re: - This is going to be BIG! - Everything I didn’t learn about startups as a VC (…or why VCs don’t make good entrepreneurs)

jasonoliver — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:05:33 -0000

hopefully going from VC to product mgr at startup to starting my own company in the future will be a viable route, but i agree, i am definitely learning more on the product mgmt and strategy side than i ever did as a junior VC about creating value at a startup

Re: Live Show in a Digital Medium

jasonoliver — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:44:28 -0000

check out deadmau5. he is a genius. and his live shows are amazing.

Re: http://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/365058247

jasonoliver — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:32:36 -0000

i saw wale at le poisson rouge with zarick right before i moved to socal. he plays an awesome live set. and i love center of attention.

Re: Pornstar Tweet!: “Stalking Porn Stars — With Their Permission”

jasonoliver — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:08:36 -0000

twitter could probably 2x their revenues if they built an official pornstar following/tracking service haha.

Re: Janta Foundation launches p2p micro-loan site for child education

jasonoliver — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:46:18 -0000

p2p microfinance is an awesome phenomena. also check out http://www.wokai.org, web-based microfinance platform targeting micro-entrepreneurs in China. over 300mm people in China live on less than $1/day. founded and based out of norcal with local chapter in nyc, sea, hk and beijing.

Re: China’s growing addiction: online farming games

jasonoliver — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:49:08 -0000

will fishville be larger than farmville? battle of the zynga copycat games about to ensue!

Re: Asian virtual goods market is seven times bigger than U.S.

jasonoliver — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:03:18 -0000

awesome summary of what im sure was a super informative and eye-catching preso by my buddy ben. wish i could have been there in person, sounds like a pretty interesting conference.

Re: Norwest’s Tim Chang explains why virtual goods are so hot in social games

jasonoliver — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:04:56 -0000

awesome interview with Tim, but have to disagree on one point. Tim mentions that the Big 3 are moving away from low-hanging fruit like copycat games, and moving to higher production value games, then highlights Playfish as leading the charge. I love Playfish and respect their history of creative game development more than any company in the space, but Country Story, one of their most recent games, appears to be capitalizing on a current popular genre that will remain nameless, and Zynga's 2 recent mass phenomenon games, Farmville and Cafe World, were not exactly original. Nor is their upcoming Fishville title (I'm sure Crowdstar can't wait for that to come out, although Zynga will probably just move users from Farmville to that). I would argue that Zynga and Playfish have no reason to be original because they have what other publishers don't have, ginormous and actively engaged userbases to cross-promote to and to continue to build upon.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

jasonoliver — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:53:31 -0000

impressive taste! already dug some of your indie rock recs but the fact that you are also a cudi fan is very cool. keep posting the good music.

Re: I've joined AnyClip – and we've launched Casting Couch

jasonoliver — Thu, 07 May 2009 11:34:37 -0000

congrats man, sounds like you are pretty passionate about this new opportunity and that is all that matters my friend. will definitely play around with the app (at work).

Re: iminlikewithyou

jasonoliver — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:11:29 -0000

"we put the GAY in GAYmes"

your welcome charles.

Re: Metrics Update

jasonoliver — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:09:43 -0000

is there a way to slice link performance by things like time of day, time of link creation relative to other people creating bitly links for the same underlying link, or potentially even type of link (ie links from youtube vs. cnn vs. blogs). like so i can understand my influence power across different metrics so i can optimize when to share information so most people will potentially read it based on historical data?

Re: Always Act From a Position of Strength

jasonoliver — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:47:26 -0000

peter, as a whippersnapper myself, i must say that i agree with you. networking during live tv only makes sense to me during sporting events or award shows. i still remember being shocked at how many people were actually on twitter when i searched mcgahee after that vicious hit in the ravens steelers playoff game, and saw the page refresh every second with hundreds of new tweets. and watching the grammys or oscars would have been much less interesting without the comments from couch potatoes across the country.

i agree with you and andrew in that since i am rarely home to watch tv shows live, i really could do without ppl on twitter going crazy over plot twists as they happen in real time.

what i am waiting to see is when the networks (who recently spurned boxee) begin to offer full libraries of shows through MSO and telco VOD offerings, and when premium channels like HBO and Showtime offer free web streaming through MSO and telco data offerings.

Re: iminlikewithyou

jasonoliver — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:40:38 -0000

serious come on charles, you know thats the best suggestion to date. also where is my star acct???

Re: iminlikewithyou

jasonoliver — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:20:19 -0000

GAYmes