Disqus - Latest Comments for ryangraves

Re: The new way to fundraise, and avoid the man

ryangraves — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:22:41 -0000

It's a great cause, I'm very excited to see where kickstarter goes.

Ryan Graves
414.559.3924
Twitter: @ryangraves
http://thedreaminaction.com

Re: Are Financial Services Draining our Economy’s Future?

ryangraves — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:34:41 -0000

Word.

Re: Are Financial Services Draining our Economy’s Future?

allenburt — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:00:40 -0000

I agree with Friedman in the sense that modern day workers need to understand the skills of the future economy which include more "soft" right-brained creativity skills (ie graphic design), as opposed to "hard" technical skills (ie accounting).

I think Friedman and I are addressing different points.

I'm making reference to the value created by industry sectors. "Hard" value being that which produces long-run exponential growth. I.e. the development of the microprocessor - this one industry spawned 1,000s more in its wake. Or, what we are seeing now with the development of complex smartphones and mobile software - entirely new and different ways of doing business are developing exponentially with their platform as a basis.

"Soft" value doesn't do this. A new type of Hedge Fund that uses a proprietary method of trading to beat its competition isn't spawning new industries or exponential growth. It is a complex form of arbitrage that finds a hole in the market system and exploits it until sucked dry. No long term "hard" value created.

Re: Are Financial Services Draining our Economy’s Future?

ryangraves — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:47:58 -0000

Tom Friedman in, "The World Is Flat", almost makes you think that we can completely survive on 'soft' value...? I definitely buy into what you're saying here that hard value is critical to keep the engine of our economy running strong. I wonder why Friedman doesn't address this important issue?

Re: Gary Vaynerchuk - The word media is throwing people off Having...

ryangraves — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:43:38 -0000

I spent the afternoon trying to explain this to a recruiting team at my company. They keep focusing on building a great blog when their is a huge facebook group. F the blog, go to where the engagement is happening!

Thanks for backing me up Gary.

Re: Startup Ecosystems Take Time

ShanaC — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:20:18 -0000

Your Welcome- Want in on my first BA crit next week? We could could throw off the department virtually *smirk*

Re: Startup Ecosystems Take Time

ryangraves — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:59:49 -0000

Thx.

Re: Startup Ecosystems Take Time

ShanaC — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:58:01 -0000

Yup, that is so true. BTW, congrats on the Kissmetrics work.

Re: Startup Ecosystems Take Time

ryangraves — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:09:57 -0000

Word.

Also, the visibility that comes along with this blog and always being out in the community has a drastic affect on the perception of the region...other places - Chicago - need more of that VC visibility.

Re: Startup Ecosystems Take Time

ryangraves — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:06:19 -0000

What about examples like Boulder, CO. Brad Feld decided that's where he wanted to live after his entrepreneurial success, he's got the experience, and he funded Dave Cohen to build TechStars. Now Boulder is hot with startup passion and talent and startups are beginning to come out of there like hot cakes, yes hot cakes.

Seems to me, given this example, that it can happen a bit faster than you imply here...

Wonder what Brad would say...

Re: Casual writing, the new age of media. Good or bad?

ryangraves — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:24:56 -0000

@evreeland - awesome point.

"They are worried that their ideas will be dismissed because they weren't written in a professional manner."
I love this because it couldn't be further from the truth. By keeping your writing simple you're probably going to be heard/read by more people and in turn they're going to want to read more in the future because they actually learned something. Fred Wilson is a phenom example of this on his blog AVC.com. He discusses complex topics of Venture Capital but does it in a fascinating and simple way.

Thanks for the comment man!

Re: How To Take A Vacation: A Lesson (Learned) From Europeans

ryangraves — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:55:53 -0000

I would like to take a cruise at some point, but right now I have one thing
in mind...

The beaches of Costa Rica.

I'm headed to Costa Rica next week for 14 days and can't wait to surf, dive,
and lounge...

Thanks for the tip.

Re: Tackling Local Online Advertising by both Cutting Carbon Emissions and Geoengineering

ryangraves — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:42:52 -0000

"If I was launching a business today that needed local sales, I would work with the existing sales channel to standardize my inventory units (cut carbon emissions)"

I like the idea of encouraging standardization to drive costs of acquisition down. Very community centric approach that would definitely help out.

Re: Customer Development for Foursquare

evreeland — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:52:47 -0000

Sounds good. Looking forward to it as well. Congrats on the wedding!

Re: Customer Development for Foursquare

ryangraves — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:51:18 -0000

Sweet. Let's chat in December over the phone...I look forward to the convo.
(can't before that b/c I'm getting married)

Re: Customer Development for Foursquare

evreeland — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:48:34 -0000

I'm finishing up at Princeton, and trying to figure out what I'm going to do after I graduate.

Re: Sam Julien

ryangraves — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:42:37 -0000

No worries buddy, I'll see you around the blogs :)

Re: Customer Development for Foursquare

ryangraves — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:42:16 -0000

Yea I know Andrew at Groupon, they have a very compelling model that
foursquare could definitely thing about.
great idea with the 'area specials' idea.

Where are you located?

Re: Sam Julien

samjulien — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:34:32 -0000

Thank you so much, Ryan!

Re: Sam Julien

ryangraves — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:00:28 -0000

Sam - you're a smart cat and passionate. That's a powerful combination man. Keep at it.

Re: The New USV.com Launches In Beta

ryangraves — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:36:28 -0000

I love 2 things about this site...

1) the consistency of your message - throughout tweets, posts, offline convo's & likely board mtg's (although I wouldn't now) your message is the same and the focus's of whats coming with the web stay true.

2) the 'practice what your preach' mentality - this is cool and speaks volumes to your portfolio companies and future portfolio co's that you actually believe in what you're suggesting they do.

Nice job on this proj Eric F.

Re: The AVC Reader Census

ryangraves — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:20:00 -0000

Either way, it's very fascinating what they are building...

Ryan Graves
414.559.3924
Twitter: @ryangraves
http://thedreaminaction.com

Re: The AVC Reader Census

fredwilson — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:57:21 -0000

Let's see if they make it actionable and if they do, whether it is useful

Re: Ethics, Virtual Goods, and Advertising Schemes: You’ll want to follow this

dennisyu — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:41:33 -0000

Ryan, do you like Maggianos? It's handmade Italian food. If you'll blog about your dinner, I'll send you some gift certificates, as you are a good blogger.

Re: Android's Affordances

ryangraves — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:20:29 -0000

heading to verizon today to test and possibly upgrade...

I'll likely deny and go with the iPhone but I want to experience the hype.

Glad I read this to keep the option button issue in mind.

-RG