Comments(0) Amdist the ubiquitous chatter out there in the blogosphere about the exodus of Google employees, here is a really well done piece that provides a thoughtful backdrop for Google’s brain drain: the Company’s organizational, cultural, and strategic dilemmas as it matures.
A good read.
Comments(0) Back in 2006 I met Hooman Radfar and the Clearspring team, and posted that they were the most interesting company at Web 2.0 that year.
Since then, “widget” has gone from a hot buzzword to the term commonly used to describe a fundamental shift in the architecture of the World Wide Web: The web’s basic building block is shifting from a “website” with a fixed location to embeddable, portable chunks of content – widgets, gadgets, whatever you want to call them.
We’ve been on the widget bandwagon for some time now, and are thrilled to have found a team in the space to back: Sproutbuilder, who today is announcing a $5M Series B that we led. Sprout has quickly established itself as the early leader for creating, launching and managing this fast-emerging content format, much like our portfolio company Allaire did with website creation a decade ago, and we think Sprout has a similar opportunity to build tremendous value.
Today, an offering like Sprout’s comes not as a standalone software tool, but rather as an online service that continues to support and interact with the content it helped create. And, in today’s open web environment, Sprout both integrates other web services into its own offering, and is embedded into other web apps. Tying in other web services, and serving to help authors distribute and manage their content, we believe Sprout has a real opportunity to become an honest to goodness platform on the web.
For a little more color, I have embedded in the post below a sprout on this funding announcement. (For those of you viewing a permalink, not my blog front page, go here
Comments(1) Ok, so here is an example of a much more elegant sprout, which announces Sprout’s funding. Check out the video, it gives a good Sprout overview.
Comments(0) I am trying out Sproutbuilder, and here is a pretty basic sprout which incorporates my blog posts, a short and shabby video interview I did with myself, and links to my portfolio companies.
Comments(0) Happy Mother’s Day to all you Moms out there.
The unreliable Boston weather cooperated, and we had a blast of a day — breakfast in bed for Mom, miniature golf and wiffle ball, lunch and ice cream sundaes at Friendly’s, planting the garden, and a barbecue dinner.
This year I decided that sending flowers to my own mom didn’t make much sense since they would be gone in a week. So my brothers and I got my mom a tree for her yard. She loved it.
Comments(0) And the demo just got even cooler.
I can’t wait til these guys pull back the curtain and show the world what they are doing!
Comments(0) It is a cold and rainy friday afternoon in Boston. And I am sitting in a dark basement in the bowels of downtown Boston.
Sound dismal?
It’s not!
Today is demo day for one of my (still stealth, unannounced) recent investments. Yes, I actually invested in a Boston based company.
Following the scrum approach, these guys work in two week sprints, at the end of which they demo a “finished” product to the team.
And, I am now watching one such demo. About 6 weeks away from launch day, the team has really been cranking.
And, though I am biased and generally tend to see the glass 3/4 full, I have to say, the demo looks awesome!
Enough so to brighten my day!
Comments(0) Last night we had a Dog Patch Dinner at the fabulous Baraka Restaurant in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill.
Our group included Ariel Poler, Seeismic CEO Loic Lemeur, Benchmark EIRs Nirav Tolia and Sarah Leary, Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg, Lolapps founder Kavin Stewart, Sprout CEO Carnet Williams, Master of 500 Hats Dave McClure, Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya, Xobni Founder Matt Brezina, and 750 Labs Founder Dan Ackerman Greenberg.
Good food, wine and discussion.
Loic’s video is here.
Comments(0) I forgot to mention the most valuable piece of information I picked up at the EconSM Conference.
No it wasn’t how to monetize social media.
It was what to do in NYC. Seth Goldstein, CEO of Social Media, mentioned on a panel that he had sent one of his employees a long email on what he should do during his upcoming visit to NYC. Seth knows how to live the good life, so I followed up with him afterwards and he agreed to share his NYC must-see list with VCMike:
hotels:
http://www.hotelgansevoort.com/ (smack dab in meat packing district)
http://www.theboweryhotel.com/ (great young vibe lower east side)
http://www.libraryhotel.com/ (too close to midtown for me, but also nice)
restaurants:
http://www.katzdeli.com/ (for pastrami sandwich any time)
http://www.parkermeridien.com/eat1.php (for breakfast)
http://www.famousjoespizza.com/ (for pizza slice anytime)
http://www.peterluger.com/ (best steak in country, need reservation)
http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/7117729 (best burger) http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/11349683/new_york_ny/v_t_pizzeria.html(great
sit down pizza up by columbia, great cafe to read and have coffee and desert next door called the hugarian pastry shop)
http://www.sakebardecibel.com/ (great late night sake bar)
activities:
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/murakami/?gclid=CKaa5eqG3pICFQzOIgodjxUV5w
walk through central park
http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_Of_Art/the_cloisters
http://www.amnh.org/
http://www.morganlibrary.org/
http://www.stmarksbookshop.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp (best bookstore in ny) http://www.shopsatcolumbuscircle.com/scs/user/index.aspx
http://www.jazzrecordcenter.com/
Comments(1) About a year ago I tried fatblogging. While it was a total failure from a weight-loss perspective, I did get a fun mention in an LA Times article written by Alex Pham. [Correction: here is the right link to Pham's article]
(Evidently my mother in law, who lives in LA, was mortified, not amused, by the article).
So, who do I bump into at EconSM, but Alex Pham herself. When we saw each other’s nametags we both had a good laugh. She very kindly said that I wasn’t as fat as she thought I would be.
Our chance meeting was timely. This past weekend I declared war (and I really mean it this time!) on my ever-expanding waistline, and had an official weigh-in: 224 pounds, a good 30 pounds over my playing weight!
Wish me luck, I’ll need it.
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