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Re: Life Is The Bucket

Ted Rheingold — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 13:10:54 -0000

Thanks Brad. I know it been important to you share your health challenges. Society has become so much more open and accepting, but complex ailments and conditions can still feel taboo. I never knew how to speak to deathly ill people until this happened.

You always gave us great advice at Dogster, often suggestions beyond what we heard from Silicon Valley advisors. I always wanted much more for Dogster/Catater but when we finally landed it I felt like a lesser Shackleton finally get the boat cargo and crew to safety.

I'll try and see if I can catch you on the phone.

Re: Is Venture Capital Right for Social Ventures?

Ted Rheingold — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 12:00:00 -0000

Great post. Thanks for pushing on this.

I love the section about a GoodBusiness' profit and purpose needing to be fully in lock step. Those are exactly the type of businesses I look for, where the profit generates the purpose and the purpose drive the profit. When the profit and purpose are so interlocked and there's no way a bad lead investor or public stock buyers could reasonably extract one from the other then the sustainable business can create it's own destiny.

However, I think what gets both private and public investors comfortable with investing in for-profits that also have a social or environmental impact goals is not necessary that increasing margins increases impact. (Unless that are Impact VC they see impact as a liability, not a benefit). In my experience what sells investors that the a profit-from-purpose business are safe to invest in is that increased impact leads to increased profit in a fully scalable manner.

Re: A Notable Omission

Ted Rheingold — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 17:26:45 -0000

Good one Bryce!

I was doing diligence on Zenefits and ZenPayroll for InVenture during a period when certain VCs could not shut up about how amazing Zenefits was. When I did a poll of people who were actually customers, not one of them could answer. But the answers from actual customers ranged from fair to awful. What a mistake it could have been picking Zenefits because of twitter hubris, then leading InVenture thru the giant hassle of changing benefit providers and then realizing we'd have to change again because Zenefits isn't reliable over the long term. I hope not too many actually made that mistake.

Re: Acknowledging Priveldge

Ted Rheingold — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 16:17:27 -0000

In this day and age there's a lot of people that would also say simply being born white and male is a significant advantage that has to be acknowledged when evaluating one's success compared to the rest of society. I agree with them.

Re: Searching for Tomorrowland

Ted Rheingold — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 04:10:33 -0000

Personally, in San Francisco. I see people transporting themselves on personal electric vehicles that fit in a bag. People pressing a button and getting driven anywhere. People getting self driven to work in zero emission vehicles, highly efficient housing going up all around in my neighborhood (the stalemate was broken in SF a cpl yrs ago), paying at the corner store by pressing my thumbprint into a phone that's really a computer I carry in my pocket.

Heavy infrastructure will change slower. If you're really looking for that now I'd search for places starting from scratch now without legacy commitments and budgets to account for.

Re: Crowdfunding Is More Likely to Replace Ads Than Micropayments

Ted Rheingold — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 00:36:44 -0000

I love BeaconReader, but it feels to me a more suiting crowdfunding analogy for media producers would be PBS or NPR fundraising drives. Publishers need money for all operations, throughout the year. If they have to crowdfund for every article they'll never be able to to do it at scale.

And if media companies are using crowdfunding to cover operational costs, then micropayments would be analog to subscriptions. But not micropayments meaning paying a small for access to a single article, I mean it to refer to a one-time app-sized payment to buy an app. Such as $14.99 to buy 2015 MLB audio or $3.99 to buy a podcast set or a game. Instead of people subscribing to a newspaper pay for access to all articles, they use micropayments to pay for a year's access to all articles of a type such as opinion pieces by a single author, or international news, or news about my city. Then true micropayments are ther if someone wants to read that article everyone is talking about (eg a matt Taibbi or Ta Nehisi Coates blockbuster).

What concerns me about a publisher having to make a business by crowdfunding for every piece of content all year long is it would be so much work. It would having to hustle all year long for advertiser dollars seem like a cake walk in comparison

Re: Design the Perfect Sofa for Your Space

Ted Rheingold — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 13:48:16 -0000

We have one of their made-to-measure sofas. Our previous sofa took 3 months via a slow boat from Italy. We were sitting on our BenchMade in no time, and I really appreciated it was entirely fabricated in the US.

Re: Introducing OB1

Ted Rheingold — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 16:04:27 -0000

Bravo! Cuts right to the chase about how people want to transact globally. Very bold, impressive vision and backing.

Re: The Rollercoaster

Ted Rheingold — Mon, 25 May 2015 11:37:26 -0000

After 3 years of the rollercoaster with dogster.com & catster.com I got so beaten by it I responded by choosing not to relish times at the peak as a way of not having to wallow going through the trough. It did succeed in keeping me more emotionally balanced and ready for what came next. But this strategy had negative effects on my team. We'd have a huge win and people would be celebrating and I'd be even keeled and report my pleasure. A long term employee asked me if I was happy. I said I was. She said I didn't look happy, and I knew my self-preserving strategy was saving myself, but hurting the team's experience. Here's the point where I should share my breakthrough resolution to fix it, but that never came to me other than to just keep riding the ride out, ride after ride on the rollercoaster.

Re: Observations on Valuations |

Ted Rheingold — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 18:02:55 -0000

V good point about inflation. I realize now I've used Grandpa's rant about the price of Hershey bar as my thinking about what was a good deal "back in the day"

Re: Birthday

Ted Rheingold — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 19:40:33 -0000

Happy Birthday Albert!!

Re: The Illusion of Product/Market Fit for SaaS Companies

Ted Rheingold — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 01:37:14 -0000

Thanks Brad. Will be sharing this post with pretty much anyone that tells me "we've hit Product/Market fit!"

Re: Stuck in the middle

Ted Rheingold — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 03:09:30 -0000

Very sagacious words.

Re: Key Observations About Jumia And Nigerian Ecommerce From Rocket Internet’s Proven Winners Report

Ted Rheingold — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 06:45:37 -0000

Thanks for the analysis.

Re: If Everything Moves at the Speed of Light, Why Is My Money So Slow?

Ted Rheingold — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 17:46:59 -0000

Check out what BBA and Dwolla just announced on the same day you posted this. http://continuations.com/po...

Re: Realtime Payments Innovation: BBVA Connects to Dwolla’s FiSync

Ted Rheingold — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 17:18:34 -0000

Love it. So much of traditional bankings underpinnings are practically archaic. The global money wiring system still uses Telex machines as communication backup. Very impressed to see innovation from the industry. BBVA has shown a commitment to innovation. I hope they are rewarded and their peers eventually get dragged along into it.

Re: - Thisisgoingtobebig.com - Not All Startup and Venture Experience is Equal #getoffmylawn

Ted Rheingold — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 03:27:33 -0000

I think this analyst-as-VC phenomena happened when funds started giving a general title to analysts, and not calling them analysts. I heard this was done because finds were annoyed their analysts were getting blown off by entrepreneurs not wanting to take their calls. These same analysts started calling themselves VCs then. Still makes me smirk when I see it.

Re: What all Entrepreneurs Need to Know About Prorata Rights

Ted Rheingold — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:51:37 -0000

Thanks for the thorough review from ALL sides of the table. A definitive assessment was much needed.

I'm *very* impressed with the new prorata terms you're using in regards to individual investors with shared rights AND responsibilities. I actually passed on an investment earlier this year in part because the of an Upfront term sheet that included the "major investor" provision. It was the first time I saw it and read it to mean it excluded prorata opportunities for non-major investors, instead of what it meant as not-guaranteed. And it has since put me off that early supporters that can't write a $250k checks get classified differently, but I've been going with verbal agreements to at least address. So I hope your revised terms become the norm, including the very sensical component to group acceptance of reduced rights. (And note: I'm not in any way placing blame about passing on the above mentioned deal on anyone but myself ... there were other reasons that led me to pass as well for me at that time, but I want to say I'm very impressed with Upfront factoring more inclusive terms for early company backers, even though it's still just as competitive for Series A/B funds (or more so) in later rounds.)

Re: What Will Kill the Current Tech Boom? |

Ted Rheingold — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 01:35:58 -0000

Agreed.

Re: Changing Society, Startups, (My)Self

Ted Rheingold — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:09:30 -0000

I love this journey. I wish I was as comfortable as you are with the hard science and mathematical research. I think I'll take a try at "Our Mathematical Universe", thanks for the courage.

I recently sent Andy W a copy of The Art of Power by Thich Naht Hanh. It definitely created room for change in me yet still is alignment with existing life paths and purposes.

Re: BIJAN SABET

Ted Rheingold — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 18:22:48 -0000

September on Martha's Vineyard was always my favorite ... though maybe I dreamed that ;)

Re: BIJAN SABET

Ted Rheingold — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 18:21:54 -0000

What a dream state!

Re: Dr. Dre's letter to his girlfriend is the best thing you'll read all day

Ted Rheingold — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 13:02:38 -0000

My smart friend says "I want to believe but why is it dated 2/26/95 when the event is around Labor Day"

Re: Robin Williams' 25-Year-Old Daughter Driven Off Twitter And Instagram Due To Abuse

Ted Rheingold — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 17:51:43 -0000

Looks like Twitter is trying to catch up on this.

https://twitter.com/sapnam/...

Re: Another Angle On The Shifting Pro-Rata Debate

Ted Rheingold — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 20:09:43 -0000

I agree with and have been concerned by your exact points.