Ventureminded: Startups, Tech, and VC

If You’re Going to San Francisco…

Currently, my room is in a state of disarray as I pack my MVW (minimum viable wardrobe) for my summer working in San Francisco. For the last two months, I’ve been working part-time doing business development remotely for Gumroad and will continue those efforts from the company’s base in SoMa along with an awesome team. I couldn’t be more excited to get my hands dirty at an up-and-coming startup during one of the most exhilarating times to be in the Bay Area.

Given the uniqueness of this opportunity and the fact that the end of the school year threw a wrench in my plans to keep up with my blog consistently (yes, it’s been a couple months since my last post), I intend to chronicle my time at Gumroad and in SF on my blog. I look forward to sharing insights on business development, the (good) craziness of a young company, and the SF startup culture. 

Reflecting on a Year of Blogging

Today marks a year since I started my blog, a year since I cranked up my tweeting dramatically, and (a little over) a year since I began hustling and networking my around the startup world. Beginning with numerous cold emails to VCs, entrepreneurs, and tech leaders throughout the country, I had email conversations, phone calls, and meetings with anyone who would take the time to meet with me. Perhaps the best example of my networking / hustle is how I went from Chris Sacca not knowing I even existed to becoming an Associate at his fund, Lowercase Capital. And I’m even teaching a Skillshare class on how to break into the startup community (quick plug). 

On March 16, 2011, I wrote a fairly innocuous post for the first time ever and had a little under 2,300 Tweets. That post got the ball rolling for 80+ other posts throughout the year, including a stretch during which I wrote for 30 straight days. Moreover, I ramped up my tweeting in order to bolster my online presence and substantiate myself as an up-and-coming thought leader in the space. I’ve tweeted over 8,100 times in the last year (about .92 tweets per hour for 365 days - kinda scary). 

Some interesting data on my blog during the last year…

-The highest traffic day was on January 30, 2012 following my post reflecting on my first trip to Silicon Valley with 5,309 visits.

-The 2nd highest traffic day was on June 21, 2011 following my post criticizing the “TechCrunch Machine” with 4,396 visits. Arrington blocked me on Twitter shortly thereafter (not kidding).

-I’ve had 15,110 unique visitors and 17,789 total visits.

-I’ve had visits from 110 countries with the top 4 being US, UK, Canada, and Philippines, respectively.

-California recently passed New York as the state contributing the most traffic.

-But New York City contributes the most traffic on a city basis.

-The top 10 cities for visits out of the US are: NYC, SF, Boston, Cambridge, Chicago, LA, Norman (Oklahoma), Seattle, Mountain View, and Austin…which one doesn’t belong??

-The top 10 overall cities are: NYC, SF, Boston, London, Cambridge (MA), Manila, Chicago, Toronto, LA, Norman / Seattle (tied)

-Chrome is by far the most popular browser, accounting for over 56% of traffic (Firefox is second at 21%)

-“why are business school entrepreneurs most important” is the query that drove the most traffic to my blog

-HackerNews is the source that contributed the most traffic

Finally, thanks to everyone who’s read my thoughts regardless of how you’ve navigated to this site, and I look forward to writing another reflection a year from now.

A Rookie’s Take on SXSW

Over the last four days, I soaked up all that is Austin and SXSW by attending a few keynotes, going to some parties, eating BBQ, and meeting up with / just meeting people from all over the startup / tech world. So, I thought I’d summarize my experience with a list of some key takeaways / lessons learned and memorable moments from my first time at SXSW.

1. Use Twitter religiously while on the ground. I was able to score a free badge in advance of SXSW via Twitter (thanks to Semil Shah and Votizen) and then got a free ticket to Jay Z the day of the concert (thanks to Randy Hunt, Creative Director at Etsy) simply by tweeting that I was looking for one. Twitter was also a great way to glean information from other panels that I wasn’t able to attend as people live-tweet it.

2. Meet your “Twitter friends.” In Austin, I was able to meet several people whom I knew only through Twitter and now know them even better after hanging out with them. And now, I can keep in touch and catch up with them when I’m visiting their respective cities.

3. It goes without saying but use foursquare and GroupMe consistently. Being able to quickly check to see where all your friends are in Austin is really helpful when figuring out which party to attend or where to hang out during the day. I also joined a couple open GroupMe groups before SXSW, so I could be part of an open conversation throughout the event.

4. The parties I went to were lots of fun (especially Gary V’s pop-up party), but the most productive networking came from just walking around during the day. I highly recommend spending a few hours roaming the streets and convention center with a friend. I did this with David Haber of Spark Capital one day, and we were able to introduce each other to people that one of us happened to know and the other didn’t. 

5. Dennis Crowley embodies his company more than any other founder I’ve ever heard speak. He is foursquare. And after seeing his keynote discussion with MG Siegler, I came away feeling infinitely better about the future of foursquare as a major force. One of the most telling moments came when Crowley said, “Last year, we were the biggest of the small guys. Now we’re the smallest of the big guys. And we’re not going anywhere.”

6. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have a phenomenal plan for Instagram and did remarkably well during their interview despite the fact that their interviewer, Alexia Tsotsis, seemed thoroughly unprepared and was stumbling through her prepared questions. Additionally, the announcement that Instagram is coming to Android drew a huge cheer from the audience, and I can see the company reaching 100 million users in almost no time.

7. The 5-hour stretch from 4pm to 9pm on Monday was absolutely incredible. I started off by listening to Biz Stone share some of his life stories and the lessons he learned from them, then saw Al Gore and Sean Parker talk about the importance of social media in politics in front of a packed house, then saw an amazing performance by Jay Z. 

Overall, my first SXSW was productive, fun, exciting, and exhausting and vastly exceeded my expectations. I can’t wait to head back down to Austin next year.

Is Groupon Becoming a Tech Company?

After all the drama around Groupon’s IPO, it seems like the company has remained relatively quiet and there hasn’t been too much excitement around the stock. Since its IPO, GRPN has gone as high as $31.14 per share and as low as $14.85, and now the share price has settled at $20.26. And as I’ve mentioned here previously, I don’t really consider Groupon to be a tech company and didn’t think their IPO should (would is a different story) affect the IPO market for tech companies after them. Additionally, Groupon’s main competitor, LivingSocial, hasn’t been too active either. Both companies just seem to be humming along and relatively content to be settled in to the market that they essentially created. That was up until the last week and a half or so. In that time span, Groupon has announced three acquisitions: Adku, Hyperpublic, and Kima Labs. While all three startups will contribute to Groupon in different ways, they all will bolster the daily deal site’s technology, an area that has been severely lacking.

On February 6, Groupon announced the acquisition of Adku, an e-commerce data company. Adku’s technology optimizes a person’s shopping experience by providing product suggestions on sites like Amazon, eBay, and Zappos. Groupon has long been criticized for not providing targeted daily deals (bikini waxes and pole dancing classes in Boston aren’t exactly what I’m looking for), and this acquisition should go a long way towards helping Groupon and its merchants send the right deals to the right people. Meanwhile, just yesterday Groupon announced the acquisitions of Hyperpublic and Kima Labs. Hyperpublic is a particularly interesting acquisition as it is really a pure technology / data play. The NYC-based startup creates databases of local info and makes them available to developers for free and will certainly help Groupon figure out how to target customers by location, an essential feature for services like Groupon Now. Lastly, the acquisition of Kima Labs should better enable Groupon’s mobile payments capabilities.

Although I don’t think that any one of these acquisitions on its own is particularly game changing for Groupon, I do believe that all three together can make a significant impact. If nothing else, it’s a step in the right direction as Groupon begins to leverage data and mobile in a more effective and productive way, as opposed to merely being a tech-enabled marketing company for SMBs as they are now.  

Facebook’s S-1, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Zuck

**This post was published earlier today at Bostinno.com**

The cynic (and MBA) in me has never really bought in to the notion that Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook merely as a social utility, as opposed to a business. I have always found it hard to believe that he didn’t know exactly what he was creating in that Harvard dorm room eight years ago this week – not that it would be a massive company valued at upwards of $100 billion, but that he had launched what could be a fantastic business idea.

Moreover, as I’ve spent more time on Twitter over the course of the last three years, I’ve lost sight of how powerful Facebook can be for the other hundreds of millions of users that log inevery day. It is my passion for startups and tech that had me eagerly awaiting the release of the S-1 yesterday, but it is my bias toward Facebook and Zuckerberg that had me eagerly awaiting a few specific pages of that filing: the Letter from Mark Zuckerberg.

One of the main reasons I love consumer technology is because it is one of the most democratizing forces in the world today while still having the potential to generate a profit. And Facebook is the epitome of that. Although Zuckerberg began the letter emphasizing the “social mission” of which I have been so skeptical, he seamlessly transitioned to this notion of how Facebook and its users have the potential to alter key “institutions and industries” simply by connecting and sharing.

As the CEO, and now Chairman, of a company that is trying to raise $5 billion from potential investors, I admire his forthrightness about Facebook’s goals. Zuckerberg even goes so far as to explicitly write that he understands that caring primarily about the social good a company can do is antithetical to how most public companies operate. This concept was perhaps most evident in this statement: “Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”

Finally, Zuckerberg concludes with introducing the investor community to the “Hacker Way.” This method of shipping products is one for which I have criticized Facebook, as I would prefer a gradual rollout to adjust users to new features or services as opposed to transforming the look and functionality of the site in one fell swoop. However, I have gained new found respect for Zuckerberg after reading his explanation of this methodology. I can certainly appreciate the notion of launching something and then iterating multiple times until the product has reached a certain level of quality. I also appreciate the insight that Zuckerberg has provided into the way Facebook operates. I think this strategy of openness is incredibly important for the investor community because, while Facebook is a consumer product, at it  core, it is a hardcore technology company. And this fact should not be taken for granted.

After pouring over the S-1, I, like many others in the tech community, was wowed by the influence of the Facebook Platform and the company’s exponential growth. However, I was most impressed by and my opinion of Zuckerberg and Facebook was most changed by his letter to investors. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

Five Days in the Valley

This past week, while on-campus recruiting was occurring at HBS, I had my own recruiting week out in Silicon Valley. Despite having a passion for tech, entrepreneurship, and early stage VC, I had never spent much time exploring the area other than for a couple job interviews coming out of undergrad. Having gotten very involved in the startup communities in both NYC and Boston, I felt I owed it to myself to see what SV was all about and figure out if I wanted to spend the summer out there. After just five days of bouncing around between SF, Mountain View, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto and talking to people at mature startups, early startups, an incubator, and VC firms, I came to the conclusion that I need to spend this coming summer out west to truly see what it’s all about. Rather than rehash the last week, here are a few insights that I took away from my trip as well as other observations…

1. Silicon Valley:Startups :: Washington DC:Politics

The summer after my sophomore year of college, I interned on Capitol Hill in the Senate and at a lobbying firm. The experience was eye-opening to say the least, but what I took away from it was that people in DC eat, sleep, and breathe politics. They talk about it at restaurants during dinner, at bars during happy hour, even when just hanging out. Politics infiltrates everyone’s life in DC even if they’re not “in the industry.” That’s the same vibe I felt in SV. People eat, sleep, and breathe tech / entrepreneurship / VC and even soccer moms in Starbucks with their toddlers were talking about the latest apps on their iPhones. Tech has permeated the culture in SV in ways that it hasn’t done so in NYC and Boston, which leads me to my next point…

2. NYC is further behind than I realized.

Previously on this blog I’ve written that NYC is going to win out over SV, and I felt confident that it would happen sooner than most people who do so think. Quite simply, I’m not so confident anymore. While I still believe that NYC has some distinct advantages of SV (hub of numerous industries, density of startups and investors), the cultural factor may be too much to overcome in the time frame I was anticipating. When everyone in SV speaks the language of tech and that is the industry of choice, it is difficult for NYC to compete. The closest analogy I can think of is the following: often many sports commentators in the US lament that we are way behind other nations in soccer because most of our top athletes play football and basketball. However, in other countries, a majority of the top athletes play soccer. That’s sort of how it is with technology. In SV, the best and brightest go into tech, and on the East Coast, the top talent is drawn to a variety of different industries with finance being this analogy’s equivalent of football and basketball. 

3. Entrepreneurs and VCs are the celebrities of the Valley…

…and they’re treated the same way “real” celebrities are treated in NYC. When people see a movie star or musician in a restaurant or coffee shop in NYC, that celeb is acknowledged as being there, but people don’t make a big fuss over it or approach the person for an autograph. I noticed the same thing in SV / SF. When I was out there, I came across a number of top tech entrepreneurs, VCs, and bloggers at random places. And they were treated the same way celebrities in NYC are treated. The real question is would people on the East Coast recognize these so-called SV celebrities?

Other observations…

-Stanford’s campus is gorgeous, but I still would take Chapel Drive and Cameron Indoor over Palm Drive and Maples Pavilion any day.

-I kind of knew this beforehand, but Sand Hill Road is very underwhelming.

-That being said, some of the offices were incredible on the inside, and I’m very grateful that numerous people took the time to speak with me.

-The commute between SV and SF is absolutely brutal. If the West Coast had NYC’s density of startups and investors, I don’t think NYC would ever have a chance of catching and passing SV.

Social 2.0(12)

Over the last month or so, the debate has heated up over whether the social media bubble (if there even is one) is about to burst. Some seem to think that Zynga’s mediocre IPO spells the end even before Facebook or Twitter’s IPO. While others, like Fred Wilson, think that the recent tech IPOs have properly valued these companies and that there’s plenty of time left for this social media craze. Those who have stumbled upon my blog before or follow me on Twitter know I’m fully in the latter camp. However, I’ll take it a step further and elaborate on where I think social media is going in 2012. 

Zuckerberg famously said that people share twice as much online every year. This statement became Zuckerberg’s Law of Social Sharing. In my opinion, though, 2012 will be defined not merely by sharing for the sake of sharing, but sharing actionable / executable information that is easily monetizable. This sharing may be done online or offline, could be a product or service, could be in the form of information or images or other content. However, the common denominator of this sharing is that other people can act on it in some way. 

We’ve already started to see a site of this type experience exponential growth - Pinterest. A similar site is Svpply, which is beginning to gain more traction and is a little more focused on how to transition this sharing to e-commerce. In the offline world, sites like Skillshare, SideTour, Zaarly, and TaskRabbit allow people to share skills, experiences, and responsibilities with others. This is the type of sharing that is immediately meaning and useful to other users, as opposed to simply flipping through pictures from someone’s vacation or looking at their new baby. Even a site like Twitter, which was initially grounded in sharing for the sake of sharing is beginning to trend in this direction as users begin to retweet promoted tweets and share information about brands’ products and services. I firmly believe that if Facebook wants to reignite its growth (and stagnant valuation), it must begin to offer actionable / executable information by incentivizing or conditioning users to share more than their latest drunken night out with friends.

As sites fight for users’ time and people begin to decide where they want to spend their precious time online, the sites that provide the most useful information and beneficial experience will rise to the top. The battle for online timeshare is virtually a zero-sum game, and the startups that offer this new type of social sharing will be the winners.

Startup Scramble at the (Stifling) Innovation Lab

I’ve only been at Harvard for about 2.5 months, but I already know that this institution doesn’t do much wrong and doesn’t do anything without spending a lot of time thinking about it. These realizations are why I was so shocked and, frankly, disappointed by the handling of this weekend’s Startup Scramble event. The Scramble is serving as a kick off event in advance of the November 18 grand opening of the Innovation Lab.

On the surface, this sounds like a terrific way to open up the iLab to the Harvard community. However, the Scramble was open to both Harvard and MIT students, and it wasn’t until the last couple days before the event that tickets were made available to the public (a whole 10, I’ve heard). This selective exclusivity sends the wrong message to the community at large and doesn’t do much for furthering Harvard’s relationship with our neighbors. On Friday night, two well-connected people in the Boston startup community (one attends a school other than Harvard and MIT and the other is an alum of a school besides Harvard and MIT) were tweeting about how ridiculous the exclusive nature of the event was, and I couldn’t help but agree.

The proper way to handle the event would have been to make it Harvard-only or welcome anyone and everyone with open arms to the new facility that the University is so proud of (in a similar fashion to Harvard Tech Meetup). To make matters worse, only about 60% of the people who signed up and paid $40 to attend actually showed up, when there were certainly plenty of non-Harvard and MIT people who would have gladly paid to be a part of the Scramble and get an early look at the iLab. I’ve seen several tweets from people at the event saying that it’s been a great event so far, but I can’t help but think it would be that much more enriching to have students from more than two universities and other people from the Boston area.

Innovation can only be achieved and startups can only be built successfully when drawing on the skills and abilities from a variety of different people. This weekend’s Scramble was an exercise in stifling innovation and a disappointing way to showcase the iLab. I’m confident, though, that things will be improved going forward.

Harvard Tech Meetup: MBAs Care About Startups Too

On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg came back to Harvard for the first time since 2005. And by Harvard, I mean the undergrad campus - not the business school. The event was framed as a “recruiting event” organized by the Office of Career Services so that they could limit it to 200 “qualified” undergrads, who, granted, likely have more technical talent than your average Harvard MBA. Little did we at Startup Tribe know that Zuck would grace us with his presence shortly after his recruiting pitch at the College. However, his stopping by to shake my hand didn’t really do much to appease me, and frankly his pitstop at the Innovation Lab was likely to promote the building and the University’s initiatives, not to expose him to the MBAs who happened to be there. Let’s not forget that Sheryl Sandberg herself has a MBA from Harvard and has been fairly critical to Facebook’s success since her in 2008. As a business school student at a school that is notorious for sending a majority of its graduates to investment banks and consulting firms, we are doing our best to shed this “stigma” and show our passion for entrepreneurship.

I’ve written here before how I think business school is very helpful for aspiring entrepreneurs, and we’re fortunate to have a lot going on at HBS (the iLab that is used primarily by MBAs, Startup Suppers that are open to all of Harvard but organized by MBAs, Startup Tribe, Entrepreneurship Club, TechMedia Club, MVP Fund, business plan competition) to sate the most entrepreneurial of students. However, for the most part, these initiatives are confined to our b-school bubble and the University as a whole.

Enter Harvard Tech Meetup - November 15 from 7 to 10pm. The name is a bit of a misnomer, as the only Harvard part about it is that the event is being hosted at Harvard. You see, this is a startup event open to the entire Boston community that just happens to be organized almost entirely by Harvard MBAs who love tech, startups, entrepreneurship, and early stage VC. As of the writing of this blog post, we have attracted 400+ registered attendees including students from 10 different universities, VCs from 8 different firms, and too many entrepreneurs from the community to count. We received over 20 applications to demo, ultimately choosing 10 to present. The demand to be a part of this has blown the organizing team away. It is a true testament to the strength of the Boston startup scene and the vibrant student population, and we are incredibly humbled that so many people have shown interest. Not bad for a group of MBAs.

CrunchFund and Why We Care

Previously published on Venturebent.com

Over the summer, I wrote a post on Ventureminded.me entitled “The TechCrunch Machine” in which I railed against Arrington, his conflicts of interest, and how the site had lost its way, particularly how it shifted from highlighting up-and-coming startups to focusing on larger tech companies. Arrington has long been criticized for being a Silicon Valley insider writing about startups while simultaneously being an active investor. More recently, MG Siegler’s pseudo-departure from TechCrunch to join Arrington at CrunchFund raised some eyebrows as well. But why?

Chris Dixon tweeted that Michael Moritz was a former journalist and became a successful VC, so perhaps Siegler would follow a similar route. However, there’s a major difference between the guys at CrunchFund and Moritz. The latter stepped away from his journalism career at TIME to pursue a career in venture capital at Sequoia. Arrington, and to a certain extent Siegler, is still very much entrenched in unearthing stories, breaking news, and relying on sources. All of these things are not only critical to being successful at writing about startups, but are also vital to sourcing deals. So why can’t they do both and just disclose when they’re writing about an investment (as Arrington has done and continues to do)? Simply, when someone is talking to Arrington or Siegler, is he/she speaking to the writer or the investor – who knows?

In my opinion, it all comes down to a simple distinction between bloggers and journalists. The guys at CrunchFund want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be called “journalists” to have that official seal of approval from the media community, but they want to be renegade bloggers in order to continue investing without a conflict of interest cropping up all the time. It just can’t happen. A journalist must be completely impartial. For example, no CNBC employee is allowed to hold stock of any kind – even sports business reporter Darren Rovell (who is also the source of this statement). Why should a tech writer be allowed to invest in companies (whether he writes about his investments or not)? A “blogger,” on the other hand, is unofficial; it’s a person who dabbles in writing online but has some other main profession. No one has a problem with Fred Wilson blogging on a daily basis because no one would ever confuse his style or content with actual journalism, and he’s not breaking news by relying on inside sources. Arrington and Siegler, however, are journalists all the time – whether they want to be or not.

For the sake of transparency, impartiality, and a host of other reasons, Arrington needs to shut down Uncrunched or CrunchFund. Something tells me he’d be more likely to part with the former.