Disqus - Latest Comments for lucaf

Re: Zemanta at Defrag conference (and discount code)

lucaf — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:48:22 -0000

The "luca1" discount code will now give you $200 off Defrag 2009.

Re: Zemanta at Defrag conference (and discount code)

lucaf — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:32:52 -0000

Defrag 2008 was indeed a great conference. The presentations were great, very thought provoking - but the conversations with other attendees were absolutely invaluable. And for 2009 you can use discount code "luca1".

Re: Is Twitter A Substitute For Set Top Box Data?

lucaf — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:20:09 -0000

Interesting thought, but the challenge of media measurement is that your sample has to be demographically and behaviorally representative of the universe. Twitter users are not a good sample. And I'd argue that twittering about media consumption is indicative of low engagement, hence your measurement misses the most valuable eyeballs.

Re: Why Isn't Paypal More Successful?

lucaf — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:55:34 -0000

I find their marketing pitches to be fundamentally dishonest. PayPal: "Let us take money out of your bank account because it's better for you". Me: "No it isn't, it's only better for you". Hence I am exceptionally reluctant about entrusting them with my credit card information. In some instances I have not proceeded with a transaction because I did not feel like going through the PayPal process.

Re: The Economics Of Spec Work

lucaf — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:13:12 -0000

Oh, poor Andrew, you are actually defending those kids by trying to prevent them from having access to work at 5% of Boulder rates (which is probably starting to be a respectable sum of money in Lahore or Karachi), instead I accused you of trying to protect your own interests... I am SO sorry....

Now, seriously... "Professional" designers (or whatever you call the category you are defending) are damaging their own image and standing by throwing mud at the lower end of the market. Clients (like myself) respect individual professional designers for their individual capabilities, but - I can assure you - have no respect for unionistic attempts at keeping competition out of the door. Furniture makers in North Carolina have had to retool or exit the market. Programmers have to deal with outsourcing. I fight every day with competition next door and half a world away. Why do you think you are special, and you deserve to be protected from competition leveraging different economics in other parts of the world with a new business model enabled by technology? What makes you think you can insult your clients by accusing them of unethical behavior, and get away with it?

Like players in many other industries have already done a thousand times, you should recognize that your business model can't effectively compete in the lower end of the market. In the long term, you'll win by doing that. And in the short term, you'd gain a lot of respect.

Peace, Andrew.

Re: The Economics Of Spec Work

lucaf — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:11:35 -0000

(post moved to another thread - please delete)

Re: The Economics Of Spec Work

lucaf — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:31:01 -0000

"Zealots"?

You have accused customers of spec work services to behave unethically -- based on an ethical standard you felt you were entitled to set. You want to protect your ivory castle from market forces enabled by the very internet that has made your industry flourish. You want to deny market access to "competition" by people who have not had the same access to education and training you've had, who live maybe in India or Pakistan instead of Boulder.

And the zealot would not be YOU?

Re: Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States

lucaf — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:14:43 -0000

There's one more thing that we'll be getting from an Obama administration, even while it's not in office yet: a wave of uplifting optimism that we can get out of the doldrums we're stuck in, both domestically and internationally.

Anybody who listened to his speech last night and did not feel that sentiment must had forgotten his meds...

Re: Why Can My Car Move When I'm Not in It?

lucaf — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:50:22 -0000

That reminds me of a Car Talk episode earlier this year about a car moving on its own: http://podcastdownload.npr....

Re: Hacking Education

lucaf — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:19:07 -0000

If you are reading Fred's post because it was mentioned at the Defrag 2008 conference, come join the BoF dinner tonight on "Defragging Education".

Re: Hacking Education

lucaf — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:11:49 -0000

As a tech entrepreneur (and more recently as a father) I've had education in the back of my mind for a long time, and your post resonated very strongly with me.

The education system is obviously broken and obsolete, but the fix it isn't obvious. Figuring out how to bring the 21st century to education is a great opportunity to make a remarkable contribution to mankind.

Please keep us posted on the session. If offered the opportunity to participate in person, I'd happily make the trek to NY.

Re: [bijan sabet] the personal tumblelog of Bijan Sabet

lucaf — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:31:06 -0000

Well, now we know what they've been doing instead of working on making their service better... er, not worse.

Re: Am I Done with Facebook? Twitter FTW!

lucaf — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:33:55 -0000

I had a similar moment yesterday - I got annoyed at the Facebook icon on my Blackberry and uninstalled the app.

I am finding Facebook very invasive, and it has a lot of overhead. With Twitter I get what I need (contacts' updates) without too much fuss.

Re: My Eccentric Approach to Entrepreneurship

lucaf — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:21:44 -0000

Your approach is eerily similar to mine. My only problem is with your first point - I find it difficult to find too many trusted, competent, trusted, energetic, trusted and smart people to partner with. Oh - did I mentioned that I have to be able to trust them?

Re: We Need A New Path To Liquidity

lucaf — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:35:07 -0000

Institutional VC funds and entrepreneurs don't need to wait forever - they need to have slightly different priorities. Easier/new paths to liquidity require a new set of investors/buyers coming to the table. Entrepreneurs can achieve that by focusing on "making" rather than "raising" money. That requires VCs to look for "path to cash flow generation" before "path to exit". And that fixes the starving entrepreneur problem too.

You point out how lots of fun companies get bought by the big guys only to end up languishing. Maybe that's because they ultimately can't sustain themselves in a world where there's no liquidity event to work for (you are already public) and you have to make money to survive. Some of those products are just ignored or mismanaged and could have thrived otherwise, but maybe - just maybe - some never deserved to exist because nobody is willing to pay the bills in some way. I love del.icio.us, I use it every day (or at least until the Firefox addon broke in Ubuntu, but that's a different story), but I am not sure I'd be willing to pay for it.

Re: We Need A New Path To Liquidity

lucaf — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:41:59 -0000

Background: I spent my whole professional life bouncing back and forth between tech entrepreneurship and M&A investment banking. One of the companies I founded got its first round on April 4, 2000 - 'nuf said. Your post resonates with me. A lot.

Let me try this on you: maybe we need a new type of investor more before we look for a new path to liquidity. A truly long-haul investor, who does not necessarily plan the exit before writing the check. An investor who stays in for the cash flow rather than windfall at the end. You know, the kind of investor who so far has been looking at boring, metal bashing businesses. The businesses that make money and don't change hands all that often. Since it is infinitely easier and cheaper to develop a product today than it was in 2000, internet companies don't need to become very large for dollars to get to the bottom line and get distributed to shareholders - as long as that's the entrepreneur's objective. Oops, then we need a new entrepreneur as well. The list is getting long: a new path to liquidity, a new type of investor, a new type of internet entrepreneur...

I think all of this is part of the growing pains (growing as in getting more mature, not bigger) of the internet as a sector. The automotive industry was not all that different in the early 1900s.