Disqus - Latest Comments for CoryS

Re: The AVC Reader Census: A Day Later

CoryS — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:01:51 -0000

Surprised that hunch.com doesn't have a simple location question or tag the IP address and ask if it is correct or not (to stay in the yes / no / skip format).

Between this and Twitter, Fred, there's a ton of food for marketers' thought. :)

Re: Is Blog Reading Mainstream?

fredwilson — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:52:29 -0000

Not the same but part of the same thing

Re: Is Blog Reading Mainstream?

CoryS — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:40:55 -0000

Are you implying that blogging and tweeting and/or Facebook updates are the same? I think the two styles and occasions of use are very different.

Re: Is Blog Reading Mainstream?

fredwilson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:47:01 -0000

Twitter and Facebook ate itunes for content

Re: Is Blog Reading Mainstream?

CoryS — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:20:16 -0000

Nope - I work in an office that is not part of the tech-centered universe where smart phones are used for email and most people here get news from websites, not RSS.

Blogs will be mainstream when RSS feeding is mainstream as we largely live in a content consumption world. When Apple comes out with an "iTunes for content" that people can buy or select easily and consume without thinking about, then we're going to see some real mainstream growth.

Re: Under Pressure…Twitter Just Made It HARDER For Us All

CoryS — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:49:33 -0000

Great post and commentary. Could be wrong, but isn't this what they call a "tuck in" late round VC investment to help out some buddies in the community prior to a [pending] purchase. Better to get 20-30% payback in <12 months with some of those dollars sitting in LY's fund, right?

Re: Getting Out From Behind Your Desk

CoryS — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:03:40 -0000

Working for a larger company, I totally get the challenges and benefits to 'management by walking around'. It consumes hours, if not days, but honestly, I can't imagine being more productive when done right. Now, we all pay the price by doing email and quant work at 8PM, but I think office time is really good collaboration time and should be used for it when possible v. being in an office with the door shut. If there's no common office, then making time in a common space is priceless for high output people.

Fred, my bet is that you offer more vision and strategy in one hour than most entrepreneurs could hope for the rest of the month. Keep on it.

Re: Is The Exclusive Deal Between Apple and AT&T Anticompetitive?

CoryS — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:36:40 -0000

And Nokia has done just that, have you read the Ovi / N97 review on Gizmodo? Ouch.

Re: Let The Students Teach

CoryS — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:39:55 -0000

Northwestern's Kellogg School has adopted this format in its MBA program and I enjoyed the classes that embraced the students to drive the course's path with the guidance of a professor-mentor.

I would love to see more "open space" for kids to discover areas of learning kind of like Google does for its engineers.

Great post.

Re: A Deeper Dive Into The First Quarter VC Investment Numbers

CoryS — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:16:27 -0000

Happy to get the intro - sent an email to you.

Understand the risk/reward, just questioning who invests in the higher capital projects as it is easy for companies and investors to back off innovation that take 5+ years to pay back. Is the answer the government via universities into start ups? [loaded question]

Re: A Deeper Dive Into The First Quarter VC Investment Numbers

fredwilson — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:26:33 -0000

Neither of us is right or wrong

You need both

I just think from a rate of return perspective, software is much better risk/reward

Do you want an intro to amee?

Re: A Deeper Dive Into The First Quarter VC Investment Numbers

CoryS — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:20:00 -0000

We can agree to disagree on innovation investment as we've debated software v. hardware before. I'd say that a better car isn't made better solely by software or a website, but you can accurately retort that the software or website can do a whole lot.

Would love to connect your AMEE team to the energy products team we've got at my company: http://blackanddecker.com/Energy/products.aspx

Re: A Deeper Dive Into The First Quarter VC Investment Numbers

fredwilson — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:51:12 -0000

This is one of the investments we made recently

http://www.amee.com/

you don't have to invest billions to create important change

in fact, I would argue most important change is created by investing very little

Re: A Deeper Dive Into The First Quarter VC Investment Numbers

CoryS — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:47:13 -0000

So, you're saying that more websites for consumers is a better investment path than clean tech investment during this downturn? I guess that's the difference between a VC looking for a low capital, high return (as Umair would say = decayed strategy) v. building a LT sustainable technology and with it a new industry.

Funny, or not so really, that when oil prices goes down, so with it goes clean tech investments. Been this way for over 30 years.

Re: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/04/earning-your-media-continued.html

CoryS — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:15:39 -0000

Bit of in-house, non-agency marketing perspective here. This is all about problem - solution, right? Problems with earned media:
*interaction and engagement requires qualified staffing, we are cutting staff in big companies atm
*buying traditional media is planned, then executed = predictable, earned is assumed to be a messier process
*earned media, may not extend fast enough to mass audiences for large audience adoption
*many agencies do not do both earned and traditional, hence when we pick media, our existing traditional houses get the jump ball
*we [in house marketing groups] know the trend is coming, and also see the gap on what to use to cross over, e.g. the way Salesforce stepped in
*along with point 1 = we are struggling with budgets and while 'new' is interesting, cost cutting / effectiveness better be part of the equation, don't push new untested stuff at us as we're not college kids willing to try anything for free

Now, is slide 22 my answer to the list above?

Re: A Time For Assessing "Strategic Opportunities"

CoryS — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:52:05 -0000

"The worst place you can be in this market is out of money and without a plan. The likelihood is high that you'll be out of money at some point. Just don't be there without a plan." Absolutely!! Seeing this first hand, Fred. Very few handle crisis mode well, and this environment has turbo boosted folks into fire fighting mode with little time to window dress.

Re: So You Want To Be an Entrepreneur…Don’t Lie to Yourself

CoryS — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:14:42 -0000

Honestly, corporate wonks should also feel that asking for money is like begging and not a given right of the annual budget. Once a beggar, always a beggar I guess.

Re: Thoughts on Google and Apple's Earnings

CoryS — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:06:32 -0000

Imagine how different the perspective would be if Apple had announced a significant product at MacWorld. Let's be honest, what people want from Apple is a continuing product road, Steve or no Steve. Since the 3G iPhone, the company has done little to show that it is responding to the economy or provide derivatives to its new cash cow and likely LT profit driver. If Apple does with iPhone what it did to iPod in creating a line of products at a range of price points, then they should garner an commanding market position in the US and a respectable global position v. Nokia. If Jobs is the only one at the company that can get a new product vision accomplished, then clearly the stock is not worth much if he isn't there to push buttons.

My current bet is that Apple is savvy enough to roll with a broader line of iPhones later in 2009 and run the same play it did late in 2008 - leveraging lots of ad dollars and winning the battle for discretionary consumer spending.
(disclosure: I'm long in AAPL)

Re: Search Advertising - Up, Down, Or Flat

CoryS — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:35:26 -0000

One thing that will also cloud comparability in Q4 and FY 2008 for advertising is the election cycle that won't have the same cadence into 2009. That said, I have no idea what kind of % of advertising happened in politics v. retail and would like to see comScore dig that out if they could as it would be a very good indicator of 2009's base.

Re: Why FAS 157 is stupid

CoryS — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:17:00 -0000

Well said. The asset's intended holding period and the liquidity of the market are critical to understanding whether market pricing should be used.

Re: Securing and backing up my online bits

CoryS — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:32:49 -0000

Agreed on the service geared towards a geek audience. Just ripping down all the media of me that isn't generated from me, automatically, would be cool.

Re: Securing and backing up my online bits

CoryS — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:06:32 -0000

You mean the Rob May that backed out of blogging about a year ago is creating a service to back up people's blogs and personal content ( http://tinyurl.com/33deak ) ? ;) Seriously, Rob is a great guy with a very good eye for trends.

Conversely, I don't know a thing about code, but know enough to have my content on my hard drive first, then on somebody else's second. Is back up of personal media a big problem given the plummeting cost of storage, development of services/hardware to supplement home PC's and the increasing speed of bandwidth? I'm questioning the premise as I think there are bigger problems to solve first, e.g. getting the average 25-40 yr old person to subscribe to a RSS feed and understand the 'one to many' value prop of a service like Facebook/Typepad/WP.

Re: Securing and backing up my online bits

ceonyc — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:14:22 -0000

Yes, that Rob May... grumpy Rob.

- I don't have a copy of my blog anywhere else but Typepad.

- Not all of the Facebook photos of me are ones I took.

- I've uploaded Flickr photos over time from so many different
computers, I def don't have them all in one place...

- Some hardware is uploading itself to the cloud... like that Flash card
with wifi built in, and the Flip that uploads straight to YouTube.

It's early, sure... but I think he can startup a CF positive service
just among the geek blogger community and since it's not his fulltime
gig, good for him.

Re: Selling Apple and Google Today

CoryS — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:06:35 -0000

Think you're right on, probably about a month or so ahead of the peak based on Mauldin's post last week (worth a read: http://tinyurl.com/7a63mx ):

"We both see a very tradable rally going into spring. Then, when we get even more earnings disappointments at the end of the first quarter and warnings at the end of the second quarter, we could see another test of the November 20 lows. Earnings disappointments are the catalyst for protracted bear markets. But the wild card is the coming economic stimulus package. We have never been in a situation like this."

Sounds like boring investment grade corporate bonds are the play of 2009. Happy hunting.

Re: Google Earnings Being Revised Down

CoryS — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:52:54 -0000

Assumes status quo, Fred. Thinking back to the last 2 recessions, some of the then current titans (e.g. MSFT, IBM) came out of the recession to face completely new or resurgent players that became new titans. e.g. MSFT from 2000 to now is part of the lost decade (on track to generate $17B+ in 09 income). IBM from 1991 to 2000 was an equally poor performer relative to the NASDAQ. Contrarily, I'm not sure that Apple was viewed as a titan in 2000 worth putting a lot of money into, but has had a phenomenal run.

Recessions change status quo and players with new business models have taken advantage of those times to realign the value chain in ways we're not looking at from today's prism.