DISQUS

Taibbi's response to Goldman's b.s. response is on point. The idea of "fair and balanced" has been raped by corporate interests to mean exactly the opposite of it component words. 451 anyone?

It's funny, if I had a dollar every time I heard someone in tech with a British accent assert something that turns out to not be true...

Unsolicited advice: They've got some smart-link real-estate tweeking to do. Book SL: make cover visible - too small. Icons of other commenters(?) doesnt add any value...what's the concept there (others who have read it/discussing it?)...unclear. Stock SL: chart too small, SL dominated by the two boxes which isn't information, just a link too information. Need to put more value add in the SL pop-up and make the links smaller; guarantee it will drive more click thru. The principle is you have to show value before ppl bless you with their attention in the form of a click thru. Wine SL: "could not load tool tip".

Interesting that they require an MBA but not a CFA. All is clear now.

Anyone willing to take a shot at the CEO's resume? "In 2004, Woody co-founded Old Firehouse Capital and successfully innovated a business model to leverage the developing turmoil in real estate capital markets." Sounds like he started a mortgage brokerage business to me. And this guy is CEO of a hot tech start-up? Good luck with that.

Um, this shouldn't be an issue. How to fight it? Simple, get your own lawyer. Yes, it will cost you money, but them's the breaks. Happens. Gather up all of your sketches and emails where you communicated about the logo development with your clients. Surely you must have some early versions showing that you independently generated the logos. Take that to court and win. And then talk to your lawyer about getting punitive litigation damages. I think it's possible in some jurisdictions. Don't hyperventilate; fight back.

Regarding immigration, I have mixed feelings about this. First, our immigration policy is completely in tatters to the point where the only people who are getting in are the ones who sneak across our borders. Second, I believe that the technology industry waves this flag in order to keep their costs down. VCs do to. It's much easier to negotiate terms with a smart foreign entrepreneur who is used to a lower cost of living than a smart domestic entrepreneur that has costs such as a family and a house and understands the true cost of venture financing. H1B visas are being used to swap out very talented and legitimate American middle managers with foreigners that have 80% of the capabilities at 50% of the cost. The idea that there aren't enough talented, hard-working Americans to fill technology jobs is a joke. I'll work my ass of for a company that respects my abilities. If I were a VC, I'd love to increase my supply pipeline (which lowers my funding costs) as well.

It may not be enough, but it's a start. They're not done and we'll see a lot more come out of Washington over the next 12 months. Let's hope it's positive. The best thing about Americans is that even when we screw it up initially, we keep getting up and throwing our bodies at the problem. We will get it. Eventually.

The honesty about the efficacy of the marketing campaign is refreshing. If this were a typical Silicon Valley start-up, they would've been spinning this as a complete success (if not outright lying about it). This kind of honesty will help build their goodwill capital and may help them with later initiatives. Umair Haque talks about this very effectively.

There are a couple of ways to view Sony's ineptitude on this deal. First, is through the American lens of "How could they be so stupid?". Well anyone who has worked with or for a Japanese company knows that they are very poor at partnering effectively. They tightly control and manage certain things, but then on other important facets of partnering, they completely ignore them. Say, for instance, letting your partner sell a co-developed technology to your closest competitor. I can see why the IBM engineers were perplexed at the gap in strategic thinking on this issue.
However, the other view regarding this is that Japanese companies are very comfortable with technology sharing because of the market dynamics in their domestic market. In Japan, apparently technology is widely shared and/or quickly copied amongst competitors. Think about their digital cameras. Apparently technical plans are widely distributed amongst Japanese companies and core technologies appear in all offerings from competitors very quickly. So maybe they think there isn't much value in controlling this type of issue because it's something they've resigned to in their core market already.

Don't freelancing jobs disappear the fastest in recessions? I can see why the financier side of the equation would love to have that from a short-term perspective, but from a long-term sustainability perspective, I'd think you would want to sell into a population of salary earners. Just a thought.

So then the way forward for these businesses is a focus on driving scale per employee. Is this why webdevs can get a job at any price but business people are a dime a dozen???

I guess the part about this post that gets me is: Who are the people funding and running these companies that don't get this? Another question that comes to mind is: Why can't I get a job running an extremely unprofitable company that is completely overstaffed? It's dot-commers redux!
Why would a leading VC of web-based companies have to write a post explaining that profit equals Revenues minus Expenses. Are the people really running these companies really that dense?
Another point I would add to the conversation is this: Why does Internet-land ignore the concept of winners and losers? Clearly, the way that a lot of these companies are capitalized, there are market projections and financial models where every company is going to achieve Google/FaceBook like traffic and population numbers. Although the reality is that less than 10% will. Is the VC community incapacitated when it comes to assessing which companies will achieve escape velocity and which won't? If so, hire me: I don't think it's that hard to figure out. Sometimes I think being a VC is just a function of luck, not skill. You just have to be lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time.

Oh no. More economists. We're all screwed. Economists in Washington is like adding blowtorches to flamethrowers. The only thing standing in economists' way is reality.

BTW, Fred, interesting article showing the breakdown of traditional journalism (from a different MSM outlet):
http://www.newsweek.com/id/179825
Great read.

"explaining away certain numbers that are on the books but make no sense." Actually the valuations do make sense considering that the exit for any of your companies at any point in time will be heavily influenced by the level of public market valuations. If you sell to a public company or go public, one of the key data sets that will be utilized in setting the price will be comparable public company valuations. Additionally, when a company does an accretion/dilution analysis, the valuation levels of its equity will directly effect its break-even points.

I completely disagree that the value proposition of commuter and light rail is powerful. Do you know how much they cost? BART is example #1. It loses $100 million+ a year. As someone who has tried and forgone a system that COSTS AS MUCH AS DRIVING and yet sucks another 1 hour+ a day out of my schedule, I violently disagree with your thesis about rail being the answer. Throwing away public money on works projects and additional government bureaucracies that work far less well than distributed systems governed by market forces is a really bad idea. Nothing will get us to a bigger deficit and national weakness faster.
I'd much rather see a policy shift that takes the existing, flexible, familiar transportation infrastructure and puts into place a reasonable mid-term plan to shift it to electric-based technologies. So I still support grid investments. But I'd much rather see improvement in our vehicles that still allows people flexibility in their transportation. I can go anywhere in my car. I can only go the few places that BART takes me, and it doesn't even do that good a job at that.

I don't think we have a money supply problem. We have a "lendable credits" problem that is driving a deleveraging situation. There are natural boundaries to how much debt an entity can take and it's clear we blew by many of those signposts awhile back on the way to Vegas. You can put as much money as you want into the banks, but if on the other hand we're asking them to reinstitute sane lending practices, then the money supply will still contract and the banks have nothing left to fund except their performance bonuses.

Fred,
I've been following Umair for a little while now and I like your question of whether he's an economist or a revolutionary. I think he is so far ahead of the curve that's a bit of both, but strategist at the core. I liken his "DNA" concept to "managing the edges". The old model of strategy is so well-worn that following it leads to a lack of strategic differentiation. Umair's approach to turning old ideas on their head is extremely valuable at identifying which strategic assumptions may be outdated. Still, it's a bit difficult to choke down sometimes because it just doesn't "sound" like all of the other discussions. But maybe that's why his ideas will work.
I would also caveat that much of what he writes about includes a couple of trends as fact: the rise of collaborative technology, work methods and models, and the impact that this will have on traditional hierarchical organization. If you don't presuppose most of that, then it's hard to get to the same conclusions. Which is why it will look like heresy in traditional conference rooms for some time to come.

If they're as good as the pro-journo supporters say they are, they'll break the biggest news items and provide the best analysis such that they'll become huge on the web. Another way to think about this problem is whether NYT.com with it's top 30 reporters and just the web ops is a viable business. I don't know the answer but would love to hear some informed opinions...

Yeah, I want a Digg for serious news. A personalizable Digg.

Fred, more important question: can you create an incentive model that enables informed microjournalists to cooperate to assemble higher quality content that approaches the historic value of "enterprise reporting"? Is it a tool or an incentive network?

As with most trend analysis discussions, everyone tends to talk binary when in reality it's an analogue world. Enterprise reporting will remain, but it may not be done by newspapers considering the state of their business model. Frontline has been a bastion of enterprise reporting that I think will have a bright future and they appear to have been experimenting with different ways to present the content. Their business model is probably not at risk since it's purely donation based. Ira Glass is another example of public broadcasting supporting enterprise reporting which has been referenced in this discussion. In fact, I'd say that PBS has stepped in with the high level of analysis that the more traditional media outlets have missed over the last 10 years.
But yes, Gretchen Morgenstern of the NYT will be missed. Unfortunately, I think this level of competence and capability is too far and few between in the landscape of print journalism today. Gretchen rises above the fray, but there aren't many more that are able to do so. (Michael Lewis' co-authored piece with Einhorn is a shocking reminder that print still has some skills, however. See my blog to get to their fantastic pieces.)
But let's frame the question another way: can enterprise reporting be done in a blog format? I think it can. Huffington Post is getting close to having the size to start funding bigger efforts. Portfolio.com originally dusted off Michael Lewis in a fantastic piece that probably put him back on the map for the NYT -- and I got that from their website, not the print vehicle. And in some sense, this discussion on Fred's blog is probably the single best discussion I've seen about the state and future of reporting versus blogging -- it just requires the reader to self edit. And maybe that's one of the key assumptions that will have to change from traditional journalism to whatever the new form is. Journalism was steeped in grammar, style and editing. Maybe the future enterprise reporting vehicles should spend less on these resources and more on facts, synthesis and reportage. As I mentioned earlier, I have some journo friends that have told me stories about how much waste their is in the print industry. There is a chance to reform the model and still fund something beyond Scoble and Arrington in their boxers at 3am breaking new Apple iPhone models.
The idea that enterprise reporting can only be done by traditional models is false. Fred's talking about tools for microjournalists, I'm talking about identifying the financial model that enables new form enterprise reporting.

My commentary on this topic (in a bit coarser language) through an analysis of Michael Hirschorn's Atlantic article:
http://debunkr.blogspot.com/2009/01/michael-hir...

Exactly!