Disqus - Latest Comments for nabeel

Re: The Double Opt-In Introduction

nabeel — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:13:09 -0000

Yup. I use the Cambridge OpenCoffee in the same way and it's turned out great. I've even had a few situations where a meeting wasn't exactly the right fit, but the person asking me for the meeting was able to meet some good other people at OpenCoffee.

Re: The Double Opt-In Introduction

nabeel — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:10:01 -0000

This made sense at first blush, but you're response here caught me. Doesn't that basically mean that you want a middle man to deliver the bad news so you don't have to? In other words, person A asks the middle man for an intro, immediately that intro person becomes an "introductory assistant" for person B trying to talk about how B will "talk to them in a month" or is "too busy"?

Re: A friend asked me for advice: startup or big company

nabeel — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:25:57 -0000

I'm with Chris on this one. I think I understand the situation, your friend had narrowed it down to four options and you are simply saying, "go with the one you love the most." Which sound advice in the short term.

In the long term, life is too short to work at a big company in 90+% of scenarios. My four personal criteria: work in a market you love, building something you believe in, with people you trust, where your efforts will make a big impact. If you can't get that situation in the short term then at least keep on there in the long term.

Re: Nabeel Hyatt • The company was on the rocks. We had zero revenue....

nabeel — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:25:53 -0000

Hah! That's awesome.

Re: Best Entrepreneurship/VC Tumblr Blogs

nabeel — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:49:50 -0000

Thanks for the callout David, what a great list, and what a great community forming here at Tumblr.

Re: Facebook vs. Twitter: Round two with URL shorteners as the judge

nabeel — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:46:34 -0000

The base problem is that FB is private, and Twitter is public -- bots troll the Internet, it's just what they do.

Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to clearly find out if it is a bot, some report themselves, some don't execute javascript (so google analytics won't track them), but some do and you need to look at capabilities of the user agent (does the browser have Flash? is it running at 640x480 resolution?)

We saw as much as 75% of twitter inbound traffic fell into one of those three buckets and ended up being bots. This is general noise on a major website, but with an individualized bit.ly URL that gets less than 500 clicks a day it can easily be a big %.

Re: Facebook vs. Twitter: Round two with URL shorteners as the judge

nabeel — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:12:37 -0000

Did you take account of bots?

We ran similar studies over at Loudcrowd, and at first were very pleasantly surprised by Twitters performance.

However, we became skeptical when we found the bounce rate incredibly high, and it turned out a big portion of the traffic was bots, enough that FB became the better channel. I should do a post on it.

Re: Clouded Email Deliverability: Startups Pay Attention!

nabeel — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:09:09 -0000

There are a couple services you can use for email instead that solve this problem as third parties. We use Sailthru here at Conduit Labs, and there is the Techstars '09 company Send Grid. This is functionally similar to what you propose, since you end up paying a small premium (tax to these companies) to send messages this way, and eventually you end up taking it on yourself later.

Re: The quickest path to $50m in revenue? Build fun.

nabeel — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:26:17 -0000

Fixed grantaustin, thx.

Re: Digg's quiet domination

nabeel — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:30:43 -0000

Why do you think it is so much harder to get web games Dugg? Just the quantity or did something about their treatment of games or entries change?

Re: Building platform companies

nabeel — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:24:58 -0000

Great follow-up Jack.

Re: iPhone: from frustration to fantastic.

nabeel — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:21:26 -0000

Matt, this is a great comment, and absolutely true. I remember a conversation very early on (at OpenCoffee with Bijan actually) about how we just weren't the target market.

What we wanted was a Blackberry that was cooler, better UI and more features. Apple rightfully focused on everyone who didn't own a smartphone yet, instead of the folks that did. This is very similar to the approach that the Danger Hiptop took, which, with a little luck could have really carved this market out years earlier.

I've been thinking a lot more lately about what the nature of a product needs to be to go after new markets (the Wii, Iphone, guitar hero, MTV) and how different it is than simply attacking old markets, or trying to be a "merger" of an old media idea with a new platform (see: most facebook apps).

And yes, the iPhone is finally ready to be my primary device. And has somehow managed to stay perfectly mainstream as well. Amazing.

Re: HOW TO SUCCEED IN THE COMING SOCIAL GAMING EXPLOSION

nabeel — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:01:50 -0000

Colin, I'm not sure that folks like you and me are the target market for those games. What we found, in talking with many users of Facebook - is that they are looking for ways to waste time with friends. In other words, they were perfectly happy with "pyramid schemes" and "obligation-based gameplay" despite the tastes of many traditional game designers, older folks, and Facebook themselves.

The good news, as we can see from Playfish games, is that there is room for polished, relatively quality games on Facebook as well.

Re: conduit tumblog - http://blog.hugsformonsters.com/post/115224745/bran...

nabeel — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:24:04 -0000

who posted this sweetness?

Re: Navigating your startup in dark places

nabeel — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:05:19 -0000

You can check it out for yourself at http://www.loudcrowd.com, or read this Wired article:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/03/sxsw-lou...

Re: Benefit-Driven Metrics: Measure the lives you save, not the life preservers you sell

nabeel — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:05:41 -0000

Man, I've got to get you to write my headlines. :)

I'm reminded of a conversation with Sulka from Habbo about how one of the biggest predictors of whether a user was going to return to Habbo Hotel is whether they had human contact in their first visit. Didn't actually matter whether it was positive or negative, turns out the value they felt was the need for human interaction. Obviously, once they are directly measuring that, it changes how you view product development.

Re: reconnoître - “Smoking is hateful to the nose, harmful to the...

nabeel — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:56:26 -0000

That's the word on the street my friend. I care enough to enlist Tumblr shame down upon you.

Re: reconnoître - “Smoking is hateful to the nose, harmful to the...

nabeel — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:42:34 -0000

We need a similarly smart quote for, "man who has fallen off the wagon when he drinks" -- right langer?

Re: brinking. • U.S. Video Gamers Now Outnumber Moviegoers

nabeel — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:41:55 -0000

That's an excellent point actually.. and comparing the number of movie goers to the number of arcade-goers doesn't seem fair either. :)

Re: brinking. • “You’d never find your soulmate, make a friend, or...

nabeel — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:52:29 -0000

Woops. Corrected Charlie.

Re: Stop Pitching

nabeel — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:08:30 -0000

This prompted a post on my end... and since you don't do trackbacks:

"Alex’s recent post to Stop Pitching made me feel like perhaps this whole “one hour - 30 slides - go pitch!” process should just come to an end. Every good fundraising process I’ve had didn’t start with a powerpoint deck. It started over coffee/lunch/dinner and a conversation about life, our industry, and, yes, the business I am building...."

More: http://nabeelhyatt.com/post/112407056/youd-neve...

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

nabeel — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:09:18 -0000

the first vehicle I've ever felt really happy about owning.

Re: cheeauntumb - My tumblr's theme?

nabeel — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:04:26 -0000

Your site is all creative commons.. why not? give back to the community and watch it give back to you. :)

Re: Missing Muse

nabeel — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:38:17 -0000

What's also amazing is how eloquently this was written. Reminding me of the fall of real journalism over the last twenty years.

Re: The portfolio entrepreneur

nabeel — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:16:56 -0000

A startup takes all of your heart and soul to make it work, if your heart is split between multiple startups you will never have the impetus to solve the hard problems. When the very dark moments come, and they will, if you have four shiny objects running in parallel then instead of working through those dark days you are likely to drop it and say that three shiny objects is plenty.

Startups really do take a massive, whole hearted, faith-based commitment. Rain or shine, in sickness and in health, by pure energy, force, ingenuity, and luck you will make it happen. I'm determined to make it happen to matter what, there is no "no." I understand the need for balance and something to temper the ups and downs - but that necessarily needs to be in something that does not reduce your committment to making it work. Like, say, mountain climbing, or cooking, or playing with your kid.

If I've got four girlfriends then working through the tough times with one of them is much less likely.