Clipmarks | egoldstein's 'fred wilson' clips

Fred Wilson on the future of journalism

Fri, 11 May 2007 16:45:48 GMT

clipped by: mathewi
clipper's remarks: Is Twitter a form of journalism? Is MySpace the future of journalism? Fred Wilson says it just might be.

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

I think journalism itself is a dated concept. We are now in the world of conversation. We are talking to ourselves. John Heilemann said it best in his recent column in NY Magazine about Murdoch's designs on the WSJ:

Did anybody at Dow Jones ever contemplate purchasing MySpace? Did Arthur Sulzberger or Don Graham? I don’t know, but I’d wager they didn’t even know what MySpace was. The obvious retort is, Why should they have? What does social networking have to do with journalism? And, no doubt, a precise answer is hard to conjure. But if you don’t believe that the intermingling of these spheres will be central to how future generations consume their news, you’ve apparently been sleeping—and clearly don’t have kids.

The intermingling of these spheres will be HOW future generations comsume their news. Period. End of story. I learn stuff on Twitter every day that is more profound than many of the blogs I read.

Tags: journalism, media2.0

Fred Wilson gives it up for Steve Jobs

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 10:31:46 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: Fred points out that Jobs bought Pixar for $10mm and just sold it for $7.4bn.

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

Say what you will about Steve Jobs, and I have said plenty about the consumer unfriendly stuff that Apple is doing with the iPod and online music lately, but he is one of the great technology businessmen of our time, maybe the greatest.

Tags: fred wilson, steve jobs, technology, apple, pixar, business, venture capital

Some thoughts by Fred Wilson, Jeff Jarvis and Om Malik...

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 02:57:21 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: ...on the telcos desire to have Google, Yahoo and other service providers pay for bandwidth. Gotta love Fred's take!

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

We are witnessing some serious jealousy. These Telco guys want to do something about it. They want to charge Google or the customers of Google (ie us) for the privilege of that delivery.

The Telco's had their chance back in the mid 90s to develop all these value added services to run on their networks. They didn't do it. They bought back stock, built golf courses, defrauded their shareholders, took on enourmous debt, and generally did everything other than take advantage of the incredible opportunity that they had with the coming of the Internet. Bottom line - the screwed up.

Clip Source: www.buzzmachine.com

Robber barons of the internet

The big, old phone companies are trying to act like monopolies again. There is only one cure for a monopoly: competition.

Clip Source: gigaom.com

Anyone who forgot the comments of AT&T’s Ed Whitacre and BellSouth’s CTO Bill Smith, this is just a reminder. The argument is that the phone companies are going to charge for better performance for say games, or movie downloads or software downloads. It is not a bad thought, though only in cases where latency is a big issue. The argument of better network performance, as many in the business would tell you, is a bit of chimera.

Tags: telcos, verizon, bandwidth, google, internet, fred wilson, jeff jarvis, om malik, technology

A wish list by Fred Wilson

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 16:41:37 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: It would indeed by nice if these were all true.

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

Wouldn't it be nice if Saddam Hussein's claims that he's been tortured by the US were laughable?

Wouldn't it be nice if the Patriot Act was a piece of legislation that a solid majority of the Senate and the america public could support?

Wouldn't it be nice if our government didn't completely ignore the law and years of precedent before illegally spying on its own citizens?

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a President who cared what the rest of the world thinks of us?

It sure would.

Tags: fred wilson, politics, wish list, patriot act

Fred Wilson on the Web as a platform

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 03:38:17 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

It's a great observation. The Web is a Platform and you must build on top of it and you must be open and you must not try to lock people in. If you do, you are eventually going to regret it.

Tags: fred wilson, google, web 2.0, platform, blogger

Various viewpoints on different ways ideas come about

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 06:50:47 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: Without weighing in on which way is better, i will say that Clipmarks was ceratinly started in response to a need we had as opposed to a white board brainstorming session in search for an idea.

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

Nick is right, there are two ways to build a company.

You can design it from scratch, figuring out exactly what you want to build, getting it all down on paper, raising some money, and then building it. And there are plenty of success stories for that way of building a company.

Or you can just find yourself doing a startup because something you started as a hobby, or to serve your own needs, just took on a life of its own and you have no choice but to evolve it into a business.

We don't have a preference for one way or the other, but I will say that there is something particularly special about the companies that are created via the evolution approach.

Clip Source: www.genuinevc.com

“Inauthenticity. While there are notable exceptions, most successful entrepreneurial endeavors are sprung from a genuine idea born from true experience or direct & tangible observation. A founding team should not only have the relevant experience, but also immediate and authentic understanding of the end-users’/customers’ need. Blank-slate brainstormed white-board ideas rarely even deserve the material that they’re written on. Great ideas search for a great entrepreneur; great entrepreneurs don’t search for a great idea.”

Clip Source: www.ragsgupta.com

David Beisel lists the 7 Sins for would-be entrepreneurs. Not sure I completely agree on point #1. While entrepreneurs certainly need to be intimately familiar with the problems they're trying to solve, I also believe great entrepreneurs can search for great ideas. The stuff that's come out of Bill Gross and his Idealab is probably Exhibit A here. While they got a lot of flak during the dotcom boom and bust, what got lost in all of it was the great ideas (and companies) that they spawned: Goto (Overture) -- the idea of having sponsored search results was a bold one, Snap, Citysearch, and several others.

Tags: venture capital, fred wilson, david beisel, rags gupta, entrepreneur

Fred Wilson complements David Beisel

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 13:05:44 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: I agree with Fred. David's post are insightful, objective and seem to have no agenda other than to convey who he is and what he thinks. An excellent vc blog for those of you interested.

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

David Beisel is quickly becoming one of my favorite VC bloggers because his posts are so good.

Tags: fred wilson, david beisel, blog, venture capital

Between Madison Ave and Wall Street lies the future of both

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 23:13:01 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: I guess we had better move a little bit further downtown

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

The tagline of Seth's blog is "somewhere between Madison Avenue and Wall Street lives the future of both". If you live in NYC, you know that historically Madison Avenue was in midtown and Wall Street was downtown.

ROOT Markets, Union Square Ventures, and most of the interesting companies working in the online business in NYC are located between Soho and 34th Street. I totally agree that between Wall Street and Madison Avenue lies the future of both.

Tags: fred wilson, seth goldstein, wall street, madison avenue, advertising, lew ranieri

Jason Calacanis on buyouts

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:55:29 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: Other than mispelling Mark's name, a compelling case by jason.

Clip Source: www.calacanis.com

A lot of really smart business heads, like my peeps Fred and Marc, are starting to get upset with Google. Marc is sort of upset that we live in a world where no ones company isn't going to be bought by the big five (Y!, Google, AOL, Microsoft, and Newscorp). Hey, Marc... these sellouts don't need to sell! I mean, if Flickr and Weblogs, Inc. didn't sell to larger companies they would still be growing. It's really the choice of the entrepreneurs and their investors to sell--not Google to buy. You have a lot of first-time, second-time entrepreneurs in the game now who just can't afford to not take an offer from the big five. You've hit a couple of home runs, so you can wait it out and compete forever. So, I get where you're coming from, but let's not start crying about the fact that folks want to buy promising startups!

Tags: jason calacanis, fred wilson, mark pincus, google, flickr, weblogs, buyout, internet

Fred Wilson asks: where dshould excess capital flow?

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:22:04 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: A smart observation by Fred Wilson!

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

The Wall Street Journal has a front page story today titled Huge Flood of Capital to Invest Spurs World-Wide Risk Taking (subscription required- ugh).

Reading this piece makes me wonder why all that capital isn't being applied to productive uses like building infrastructure in the developing world or finding new sources of non-petroleum based energy.

Tags: fred wilson, capital, investment

Was My Space a bargain at $500,000,000?

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 05:06:11 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: Fred thinks so. I think so too! A brilliant move in my opinion.

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

Here are the six web properties with the most pages viewed (remember ads run is mostly equal to pages viewed on the web):

Yahoo! - 43,700MM
Time Warner - 31,600MM (AOL is roughly 70% of this)
Microsoft - 21,800MM (MSN is part of this)
eBay - 10,900MM
MySpace - 9,600MM
Google - 6,300MM

Notwithstanding the somewhat interesting fact that Google is a relatively small page view generator, which makes sense given their reliance on search, the shocking fact is how fast MySpace is catching up to the big guys.

I see what's happening. AOL is losing its core audience of IM/email driven teenagers to MySpace and they are losing it fast.

And MySpace is ramping big time.

If MySpace could grow its page views 50% per quarter for another six months, they'd have close to 15,000MM pages viewed per month by year end, and would catch Microsoft and AOL by March of 2006.

Who is the smartest guy on the Internet right now?

Maybe not Sergey and Larry.

Maybe Rupert Murdoch.

Does $500mm sound like a bargain? It does to me.

Tags: fred wilson, my space, aol, google, yahoo, web 2.0

Funny

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:25:08 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

You Got That Right

Tags: bush, hurricane, katrina, new orleans, fred wilson

The big picture effects of Huricane Katrina

Sun, 04 Sep 2005 02:05:26 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

I hope and believe that we are on the cusp of a new political order. We've had the liberal excesses of the democrat's run from the depression through Vietnam. We've had the conservative excesses of the republican's run from Vietman through Iraq.

It's time we get back to electing people to govern who know something about leading, operating, and managing. We need pragmatic moderates who make the hard decisions without caring about the political impact. We need civil servants in the mold of George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower. We need people who care about the details of governing rather than the details of getting elected.

We have been blessed in NYC with two such people over the past 12 years, Rudy Guliani and Mike Bloomberg. I am not suggesting we should elect either of them president, but I am suggesting that americans are going to focus on the resume more and the rhetoric less.

I think, hope, and pray that this will be one of the long term results of the Katrina tragedy.

Tags: fred wilson, hurricane, katrina

Fred Wilson's play on venture investing

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 05:27:21 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

We'll take a few really smart entrepreneurs who we can help build great management teams and great businesses.

That's our only play.

Tags: fred wilson, union square ventures

Location, location, location...even in venture investing

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 23:10:19 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: If we ever decide to raise venture capital, location would influence our decision as well.

Clip Source: avc.blogs.com

We generally want to be the first venture investor in a company. We are happy to create a syndicate with other investors and do the deal together, but we generally do not want to come into an investment in the later rounds. There are a bunch of reasons for this, some economic, but more that relate to our role in the company and our relationship with the entrepreneurs and managers.

VC have historically invested closer to where they are located than farther away [because of deal management and deal sourcing concerns]

Steve is spot on. The best VCs, which are the ones that can actually help you build a business, have learned that it is a face to face business. And it is very hard to do a face to face business from 3000 miles away. Some VCs do it and do it well, but I believe that they are the exception that proves the rule.

Another thing this blog attempts to do is educate the entrepreneurs out there who are doing for the first or second time and have yet to learn all the lessons of the VC business. An important one is location matters when picking your VC. It's not the only issue, but its an important one.

Tags: venture capital, union square ventures, fred wilson