DISQUS

ba-da-BING!

++

fascinating. can't imagine the thoughtfulness & maturity it takes at 15 to dump someone you feel that way about. personally i've been an idiot about the subject well into my 30's, much less my teens. then again, i'm a guy so that's not saying much.

snow globes / tap dancer was also moving.

thanks.

great piece jon... completely agree this is money just waiting for people to recover. annoying as hell tho, cuz i rarely make the time to deal with it. sometimes hard to justify spending 10-15 minutes on a phone call to recover $20, but it adds up.

i'd love to find a web service that monitors charges & disputes them for me. wonder if Mint will ever get into this biz.

look forward to seeing you next week at Startup2Startup!

TechLemon!
ParisCrunch!

the BitchMeme is Dead... Long Live the BitchMeme!

thanks for the plug jon! much appreciated :)

(and other cool links even more awesome)

of course it is.

but why bother even pitching a VC if you're not customizing to that audience?

however: realize that if you don't send the deck and you're not a priority, u may never get that meeting in person.

i think your story makes my point about designing for a remote audience even more true.

Rafer I respect your opinion but still disagree. even smart people like simple, and I can't imagine a VC that doesn't want to see demo and/or concept visualization

ps - love the T-Rex cartoon :)

thx for the article... great stuff in here :)

hey thanks james :)

btw, i'm friends with your cousin David (right?), both co-investors in SlideShare. hope to meetup sometime...

i completely agree.

one semester, i got an A+, a B, a C, a D, and an F.

the A+ was in programming, and i took the final stoned (on purpose) and passed with flying colors. the F was in a class i didn't care about, and i slept thru one of the major exams.

for me it was more about motivation & interest than effort & focus. perhaps that makes me a bad or dumb student, but i'd rather work with people who outperform in a few areas, and aspire to competency in others, rather than expecting that everyone will be above average in all things.

nice overall concepts, but i hate the fact that "Signup for Free" is the primary call-to-action... let me DO something fun first (like click on something), and *then* ask for an email address.

"signing up for an account" is not a user benefit. clicking on something fun just might be.

dude you really missed your calling in physical comedy / facial expression. somewhere Dane Cook is breathing a big sigh of relief you never made it to Second City or the Comedy Club.

otoh, don't quit yer day job.

great piece sachin :)

ouch. no birthday beers for you, buddy. this means war.

thanks Scott!

love this post Robert :)

THAT is the Passion I remember when I met you back at the SDForum Visual Basic SIG in '95... and I STILL love your Fire!

awesome, awesome, awesome.

Scobleizer++

1) "Hornik", no 'c'.

2) in general, August Capital is a big fund, later-stage VC. August / Hornik can afford to be wrong for about 6-12 months longer than Jeff, then change his mind and do the Series A round for Tapulous / others. witness a similar situation last summer re: funding for FB apps, only a few of which were funded by VCs (who may now be regretting those deals).

3) VCs have been known to give the head-fake, saying one thing while investing in another. typically i take Mr. Hornik at his word more than most, but i'm just sayin'...

nice piece, altho i wonder if you couldn't have said that in 2 paragraphs instead of 2 pages ;)

nice piece Robert.

i wrote a few similar thoughts a few weeks back on this as well, altho the opportunity isn't limited to just Microsoft; it's also something Yahoo, AOL, or even Google itself could implement:

http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2008/05/mem...

“Memo to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, & AOL: How to Turn 500M email logins into Facebook Platform & a Crapload of Revenue”

a bit too trite i think... Facebook is hardly Soviet Russia. perhaps China, with a technical lead. but i think the analogies fall down for many other reasons.

regardless you mention all the other things Facebook is doing "nicer"... it's because they are building on top of their own platform, which they have designed for just such purposes.

while i find both "gated" & ungated communities useful -- i prefer platform to gated actually -- Facebook is moving a lot faster than most other competitors, which wouldn't appear to map to the central planning analogy you mention.

just because it doesn't suit your purposes Robert doesn't mean it's backward & closed. Windows didn't suit everyone as well as Linux either, but somehow on the desktop it seemed to do ok for 10-15 years... and created a lot of value for plenty of people in the ecosystem as well.

right on target adam.

it's possible the doomsayers who are predicting nuclear winter 2.0 may be correct -- for companies trying to raise money on $500m pre-money valuations. however, most of the smart, young entrepreneurs i know only need $250K-$2M (or less!) to put together a cool new startup. and there's plenty of silicon valley angels willing to fund good ideas on that kind of budget.

the next wave of great startups is more likely to be born from a small amount of money and a large amount of brilliance than vice versa.

seriously: thanks for the kudos & appreciate the feedback / humor :)

boo!