SoCal CTO

JANUARY 6, 2008

I've never been able to walk into a large group of people and feel like I can "work the room." Sure, I've read various articles on this stuff, but honestly, I still struggle with meeting interesting people. I seem to be very adept at meeting financial planners, attorneys, accountants, etc. - and after 10 seconds of conversation, I'm at a loss. I can make small talk with them, but unless I'm going to see this person a few times or unless they have a tech specialization, ummm, not the best use of

Networking 191

Networking Search Naming Conversion 191

BeyondVC

JANUARY 9, 2008

I was catching up on my feed reader this morning and noticed my friend Jeff Nolan’s post (also see Brad Feld ) on Newsgator and FeedDemon RSS clients now being free. I know that Jeff joined Newsgator because of his belief in the enterprise, and I applaud the company’s new strategy. As I have written before, enterprise sales is incredibly hard.

Sales 60

Sales RSS Revenue Software 60

Jason Ball

JANUARY 7, 2008

I was given a Moshi Monster phone charm by our “secret santa” this year. I was pleased to see that Mind Candy (an Accel and Spark Ventures investment) was behind the charm and that it linked to a virtual pets style website. I’ve now registered and adopted a monster, my new, if somewhat despondent, moshi monster called Alpi: Moshi Monsters is kind of a Second Life for Kids with a tamagotchi thrown in… the puzzles they offer kids as edutainment are definitely cool -some of

Software 28

Software 28

VC Adventure

JANUARY 8, 2008

52

52

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in

Startup

Occam's Razor

JANUARY 8, 2008

I was merrily using Time on Page and Time on Site metrics for quite some time before I actually realized how they were being measured. It was a real Doh (!) moment. Turns out we have not rfid'ed every visitor and they don't rub their head against their monitor before starting their session on my website (and of course another head rub when they decide they have had enough and exit).

Metrics 121

Metrics Analytics Web .Net 121

BeyondVC

JANUARY 8, 2008

As you know, I am a huge believer in open standards and that open standards (over time) will usually prevail over proprietary, closed networks. And my one wish from a social networking perspective was to really be able to manage all of my relationships from various networks and my interests from one meta-application. In June this year I wrote about Linkedin and Facebook on a possible collision course.

Social Network 60

Social Network Networking Java Internet 60

VC Adventure

JANUARY 11, 2008

48

48

BeyondVC

JANUARY 9, 2008

I had a great conversation wtih a friend of mine yesterday about the latest release of his product. He had mentioned that one of my clips from the Economist (see below) on Evan Williams from Blogger and Twitter fame spurred some lively debate at his company. The key thought from Evan is rather than worry about adding another feature or function, ask yourself what can be taken away to create something new.” This is a central idea and one that reminds of me the KISS method of writing that my

Search 60

Search Conversion Product Developer 60

VC Adventure

JANUARY 10, 2008

48

48