What it Means to Succeed

My mom sent me a great birthday card this month which consisted of a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem.

It really hit home, and I am keeping the card by my desk. I thought I’d share it, too:

“To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty;

To find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed a little easier because you have lived.

THIS is to have SUCCEEDED.”

And here all this time I thought success was just the number of 10X returns I had?

“How an East Coast VC Got Behind the West Coast’s Hottest Blogging Platform”

Bob Buderi from Xconomy had a fun post earlier this week discussing how Polaris and I ended up backing Automattic.

Virtual Worlds, MMO’s, Social Networks

I have been watching and wondering about the intersection of virtual worlds, MMOs, and Social Networks, which feels like it has been imminent for 3 or 4 years now. I am happy to say I now have one portfolio company (not yet announced, though) in the category, and that Turbine Entertainment, an MMO company on whose board I’ve served for a few years is going to make some waves in this area too.

Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer of Lord of The Rings Online (from my portfolio company Turbine Entertainment) gave a great presentation on the topic at last week’s Game Developer Conference in San Francisco.

Here is a copy if you want to check it out: social-network-deck.ppt

Sickbay

The combination of stale plane air, not enough sleep, and too much romping in the snow has resulted in 5 out of the 6 Hirshlands getting sick. We headed into the local clinic this afternoon and came out with a whole bunch of prescriptions for: 2 strep throats, 3 ear infections, 2 cases of bronchitis and one sinus infection.

Here is a picture of our kitchen counter after returning from the pharmacy:

Facebook Mania!

In the middle of what otherwise is a family ski vacation in the Tahoe region, yesterday I popped down to San Francisco for a couple meetings I had to do.

As usual, I crammed as much into a 24 hour visit as humanly possible.

Sitting on the runway en route back to ski country, what strikes me is how obsessed Silicon Valley is right now with all things Facebook (including VCs like me).  Seems to be top of everyone’s mind, and the thing folks are dabbling with on the side that turns into something they decide to purse in earnest.

My roster of meetings yesterday certainly was not inconsistent with this. After catching up with Josh Felser, and then seeing one of the cooler video companies I’ve ever seen, my afternoon  ended up being all Facebook:

First, coffee with my pal Chamath P from — where else? — Facebook.

Then I  met Josh Liptzin, one of the star students from Dave McClure’s Facebook Apps class at Stanford.  I loved the fact that Josh originally got a B but then, when he launched an app that, after the class ended, skyrocketed, his B was switched to an A!

I also met another young Facebook app entrepreneur who has developed a cool model of enabling the long tail of FB developers to create their own version of his apps.  My  favorite exchange from this meeting was when he apologized for  having stats that were outdated — they were an entire week old!

Finally, I  spent some time with Justin Smith, who both writes the blog InsideFacebook and runs product for Watercooler. A really smart guy whose nose is deep into all things Facebook.

Clearly the Facebook thing has taken on a life of its own in Silicon Valley with its own lingo, its own subculture and, most strikingly, its own sense of time.  All this is going to have an impact as web apps and web content go social.  I’m looking forward to watching it all unfold, real time!

Out of Office Reply

I just got the following Out of Office Reply, and am jealous:

“For most of February, I am on an expedition across Patagonia — Andes, Atacama, Pacific — by bike, hike, horse, raft, and kayak.  Will have little or no communications.  Back to you in March, I hope.”

Caught in the Trees!

Last night I got an email from Scott Kurnit. Much to my dismay, I discovered that my close encounter with a tree a couple weeks ago at Deer Valley has been saved for posterity. Here is the photo:

Online Video Panel

Last night I participated on a panel at MIT on online video.  Scott Kirsner did a nice job moderating, though for the most part it was the same old stuff.

For me, the coolest part was watching video blogger Steve Garfield show his stuff real time.  We got to watch his blog broadcast our panel. Now that was pretty neat.  You can see his stuff here. Two examples in two days (see my prior post on Jeff Jarvis videoblogging) of live videoblogging from a cell phone.

I think the live web video blogging thing is something to watch…

WordPress Mojo

I just got an email update from Automattic CEO Toni Schneider with the news that traffic across the WordPress.com network of blogs is up sharply. January saw an increase of 30M unique viewers (from 111 M to 141 M).  (per Matt’s comment below, I’ve corrected the initial error).

Jeff Jarvis on Web Video

Kara Swisher points to a Beet.tv interview with Jeff Jarvis on the brave new world of “always on” web video cams/phones/flips.

I agree with Jeff that we are on the cusp of a pretty significant thing — when it is as easy to shoot and upload video as today it is to shoot and upload a photo.