Showing posts with label Mark Cuban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Cuban. Show all posts

Saturday, August 04, 2012

Fred Wilson's Blog: A Gift That Keeps Giving


Fred Wilson has an impressive track record as a VC. That is public knowledge. I have lost count of how many tech companies I got really, really excited about only to later learn it was a Fred Wilson portfolio company.

The dots I am trying to connect in this post is to propose the thesis that Fred Wilson's blog has been fundamental to his very impressive work as a VC. As in, the great work he has managed to do over the past decade he could not have done without his blog. He has a method about his comments section. That is where he goes fishing.

That thesis springs forth a few questions.

One, is it a required? As in should all VCs aspire to blog? I think yes. There are a lot of a A caliber VCs out there who don't blog daily (or ever) like Fred Wilson does. But what I am saying is if you are starting out as a VC today blogging daily is one of the things you can not afford to not do.

Two, other than fishing expeditions is blogging good for your mind? This is a huge yes. I think blogging is for everybody regardless of industry, regardless of what stage they are at in their careers. Blogging is working out for the mind. That is primarily why I blog, speaking just for myself. It also helps with meaningful networking. If Fred did not have a blog, and I did not have a blog, I doubt we would have met to date, I doubt we would have known each other.

Three, could this thesis be extended to tech entrepreneurs? That is a question up in the air. Because there is no A grade tech entrepreneur (or B grade) who blogs daily. Mark Cuban blogs weekly or every few weeks, but I think of him as a retired entrepreneur, he is more of an angel, and besides, his blog does not have Disqus.

I'd love to see some top tech entrepreneurs blog daily like Fred Wilson does. Is that possible? Advisable? I'd hope so. I wish some A grade people running for office did the same.

To Fred's credit he is a top blogger regardless of his track record as a VC. He goes toe to toe with people who are full time bloggers with nothing else going on on the side. I mean, I think Fred could earn a living simply through blogging. Talk about Plan B, not that he needs one.

Fred Wilson is my favorite solo blogger for a few different reasons. But there came a time when I did not read his blog for months. I felt like I was too sucked into it. I needed my space, I thought. But then my recent thought has been not that I should stay away, but that top entrepreneurs he is not invested in should also read his blog.

Fred Wilson, Mark Zuckerberg And Mobile

Once Fred paid tribute to Ben Horowitz on the other coast by saying he - Fred - simply writes checks. As in, Ben has been an entrepreneur. But in some ways simply writing checks has advantages. Away from action you can get better at vision and insight. Zuck struggles with mobile. Fred's blog talks often about mobile. I don't know of books delivering similar wisdom.




Fred Wilson's Impossible Inbox
Fred Wilson: A DJ
Meeting Fred Wilson In Person
A Surprising Blog Post From Fred Wilson
A Mind Blowing Party
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Sunday, January 15, 2012

Engaging Mark Cuban

mcubanMark Cuban
in reply to @mcuban

@mcuban You just told me the people who added smarts to the phone will have a much tougher time doing it to TV.
Jan 15 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

paramendraParamendra Bhagat
mcubanMark Cuban
in reply to @mcuban

@mcuban Gigabit broadband will take care of bottlenecks you point out http://t.co/39cK5kom Your observations have great short term value.
Jan 16 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

Mark Cuban, Television, And The Internet

English: Mark CubanImage via WikipediaThis was in the late 1990s. Bill Gates was trying hard to marry television to the internet. He called it WebTV. He failed. This was before broadband became mainstream. And still broadband is not there yet. I think gigabit broadband is where TV and the Internet become one.

This was in the late 1990s. Larry Ellison was after something he called the network computer. You would not have much of anything on the desktop. The network would have all the software you would need. Steve Jobs told him the technology just did not exist to support that. The richness possible on the desktop was leaps and bounds ahead of the richness on the browser. Again, this was before broadband, way before HTML5.

5G + HTML5 = Magic

Two titans were not seeing it straight. Positive spin would say they were futurists ahead of their times.

Mark Cuban Replies To My Tweet
Mark Cuban: Contrarian On The TV Business

The conventional wisdom in the industry is that we are almost there. We nailed the phone. Now TV is next. And we are almost there. Even Steve Jobs says so much in his biography. I finally cracked it, he declares.

Not so fast, says Mark Cuban. By personality Mark Cuban is someone you can expect to take a contrarian stand. As he does now. He makes some good points.

Mark Cuban: The TV Business Keeps Getting Stronger!

This is how I summarized his blog post earlier today in another blog post.

(1) TV shows are high quality stuff. Not just anyone can produce them. People like them.
(2) Video is content king. People like consuming content in video format. Much faster broadband might stand a chance but not the broadband we know. The Internet pipes just are not there yet.
(3) Ease of use is supreme. People want to be able to just turn on and watch. No browse and click.

I think all these points are valid. But by the time we hit universal gigabit broadband all three points will have fallen by the wayside.

(1) There's plenty of great quality music on the web. In fact, all the great music is there.
(2) Faster broadband will mainstream video. Video is already big on the web.
(3) People who design smartphones are better positioned than the cable TV people when it comes to simplifying the video consumption experience. I mean, we could get rid of the remote. Voice control, gesture control. There might even be mind reading.

Mark Cuban though makes a solid point that the TV people are not standing still. They are working hard to ease the complexity from another angle.

It is true that for the masses there are times when you just want to sit back and watch.

Mark Cuban Replies To My Tweet

Mark Cuban: Contrarian On The TV Business

Mark CubanImage via WikipediaI love following the VCs I follow in the blogosphere, but I wish my list was more tilted towards entrepreneurs. The problem is the top entrepreneurs don't blog. Mark Cuban is an exception. He does blog. And the guy sure is opinionated.

I think Mark Cuban just told me the people who added smarts to the phone are going to have a much harder time doing the same to TV. I don't think his stand is definitive. But his stand does give me a glimpse into the complexity of the landscape. Mark Cuban of Broadcast.com fame. I remember when they got bought by Yahoo. I was doing some preliminary work on a dot com that went on to do really well, for two years.

Mark Cuban: The TV Business Keeps Getting Stronger!
We had a policy that we never tried to create hits. That we were always going to go wide and create a reason for people to start watching video online. 17 years later. Yep, its been 17 years since we started Broadcast.com (as audionet.com first), Youtube and others are still doing the exact same thing. ...... Good for them ! Except they are making one huge fundamental mistake, they are trying to create hits. They don’t like the idea that beyond a steady stream of 1 hit wonders they haven’t been able to create a sustainable roadmap to content success. In other words, they have no idea how to drive an audience to specific content. Their hits come out of nowhere. ...... viewing for cable networks has skyrocketed and the amount of traditional tv watched has continued to increase. ..... used to be that only movie companies got output deals ..... Today, TV shows are getting output deals and generating lots of revenue across all the different platforms that show TV shows. Its not just syndication,but those online distributors want to make sure they get the best shows and they are committing up front to buy those shows. An output deal. Found money. ...... The TV business isn’t dead. It really isn’t even morphing. Sure people will watch video online. They will watch it on phones. They will download it. But the videos that online distributors pay the most for will be those that have done the best on traditional TV. Which in turn means more money for the production of shows. ...... Online video is to TV today like DVDs were to Movies in the past. A great revenue source that correlated to the movie’s boxoffice. ...... having to hit the internet button on the remote, or even worse, the input button on the remote will not be the path of least resistance for watching tv. Believe it or not, it will be far too much hassle for most people when compared to just turning on and watching TV the old fashioned way. And on top of that, distributors like Dish, Directv, Charter, Comcast, etc are working hard to improve their guide experiences which will be faster and easier than their online counterparts....... last but not least, MOCA, DLNA and good old fashioned wi fi is always going to be a hassle. No one has perfect wi fi at their apartment or house. It always screws up.
(1) TV shows are high quality stuff. Not just anyone can produce them. People like them.
(2) Video is content king. People like consuming content in video format. Much faster broadband might stand a chance but not the broadband we know. The Internet pipes just are not there yet.
(3) Ease of use is supreme. People want to be able to just turn on and watch. No browse and click.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Event At Hunch: Gender Talk (3)


I got off the train at Union Square because I was running a little early, maybe a lot early. That gave me more walking distance. I take joy in walking. Right by Union Square on the sidewalk I got randomly stopped by an Ethiopian woman with a Masters from New York University who worked for a children's organization. It was a nice talk. I sent her a Facebook email the following day.

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Mark Cuban Says Put Your Cash Under The Mattress

This has got to be one of the best Mark Cuban blog posts I ever came across. For a risk taking maven to put together such sane advice, we must really be going through some tough times as a people.
Mark Cuban: The Best Investment Advice You Will Ever Get
I Share Mark Cuban's Passion On The FCC Broadband Plan
Free Is The Future: Picking A Fight With Mark Cuban

Here's my summary of his three points.
  1. Credit cards are no good. Pay them off. 
  2. When in doubt, stick with the cash, don't invest.
  3. Spending 15% less is a better return than any on the stock market. 

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

I Share Mark Cuban's Passion On The FCC Broadband Plan

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA - NOVEMBER 29:  (FILE PHOTO...Image by Getty Images via Daylife
The FCC Needs to Set Its Sights Higher.. Much Higher (Mark Cuban)

The recent FCC broadband plan has been the talk of the town in the tech blogosphere. (Broader Broadband) There seems to be broad agreement in liking what the FCC has come up with. Some key people have come out saying it is not enough. But nobody seems to be saying what I said in one of Fred Wilson's comments sections: The American people need to revolt like they revolted against the British.

Well, here comes along Mark Cuban saying what the FCC is proposing is not entirely enough. And he is saying it with some passion. Yeah, why stop at 100 megabits per second? That might look a lot now, but not long back 5 megabits per second looked like a lot.

A parallel story is Gmail. Gmail storage looked like a lot when it came out. But soon people started running out of space, at least the power users did.

High speed internet to Cuban is less about video and more about Internet 2. Ride on.

Google has its sights on 1 gigabits per second. And although Mark Cuban is on record wanting to upend the Google search business, here he seems to be in agreement with Google's bandwidth goals.

Mark Cuban is worried about applications that might not show up even when speeds go up. I am not. I think it is inevitable that new applications will show up when super high speed is everywhere.

Cuban, passionate plenty, still does not match my talk. Revolt. Free up the spectrum for the people. There Cuban and I seem to have some disagreements. He is more cautious than I'd like.

Free Is The Future: Picking A Fight With Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban: A Quick Thought on the Viacom/Youtube Lawsuit Disclosures
Don’t Waste the Internet on TV – Protect the Future of the Internet
Should the FCC Reclaim Broadcast Spectrum
 

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Sunday, November 15, 2009

Web Search, Real Time Search, Social Search


  • Web search, real time search, social search.The social search space is in major flux.
  • Murdoch, Madoff, Mark Cuban. Cuban is missing the point. He is going back to the era of the Yahoo directories way of doing search. The list of the top 1,000,000 sites is in constant flux as it should be.
  • Twitter and Google. This is a dream come true for me. Index all tweets ever. Index all real time tweets. And then help make sense.
  • Facebook updates are very valuable. I am counting links to news articles and videos among the updates. You have your personal repository that you want to dig into at a later date.
  • If Twitter is your entry point to the web which is your entry point to the world, does that put Twitter in some kind of a central position? Sure.
  • The Google Chrome Operating System is showing up earlier than I had expected. But I guess they did say some time in Fall, did they not? A Netbook with a large enough screen with a Chrome OS on it, now that would be something. 
  • Unless Twitter grows and keeps adding new features to richen the experience, it might stay among the tech elite.
  • If this is not JP Rangaswami
  • Give India time. There is space for many Silicon Valleys across the world.
  • A Yahoo Connect sounds like a good idea.



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Friday, August 28, 2009

CubanSpeak: Controversial Take On Entrepreneurs


Success & Motivation: What Entrepreneurs Should NOT Do Mark Cuban

If you got a billion dollars, and you claim you have people pitch business plans to you every day, I believe you. But I don't have to take the rest of the rant.

Cuban's blog post tells me it is as hard to be an investor as it is to be an entrepreneur. How do you figure out which horse to bet on? Even the obvious ones are not obvious, or Yahoo would have bought Google when Google offered to be bought not long after launch.

If you want to keep your money safe, keep saying no. You will have your treasure minus the inflation. But if you are wanting to grow your money, or even grow it like crazy, then not being able to find that dark horse must really itch.

And as for tall talk, only a handful of companies engage in paradigm shift products and services in each generation. It is hard to spot them, it is hard to get in once you do spot them. But a young Steve Jobs always talked in terms of changing the world, and changing the course of world history. He did deliver. He invented an industry.

How do you separate the wheat from the chaff? That is harder than picking the winning stocks on the stock market. You need instincts, instincts that deliver.

On Business Models: Free Is Not Always Good
Free Is The Future: Picking A Fight With Mark Cuban

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Thursday, August 27, 2009

CubanSpeak: Change And The Internet


The Internet is about to change Mark Cuban WebHooks or PubSubHubBub

The Broadcast.com billionaire is bold in his assertions as usual. He is not always right, but he is always confident. More often than not, he is right. He likes to challenge assumptions. He likes to break away from the flock.

I don't think the internet has been dead and boring at any point. It has gotten more and more exciting over time. But I can sure do with more excitement, if that is what Mark means.

WebHooks and PubSubHubBub look promising. Sure. But there is some hyperbole in the original declaration. Hey, but then that is Mark Cuban talking.

The two promise to take real time to a whole new level. That sure is exciting. I am sure the two will be but members of a large family of similar applications. These are exciting times we live in.

On Business Models: Free Is Not Always Good
Free Is The Future: Picking A Fight With Mark Cuban

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Sunday, July 05, 2009

Free Is The Future: Picking A Fight With Mark Cuban

When you succeed with Free, you are going to die by Free They will be Facebook to your Myspace, or Myspace to your Friendster or Google to your Yahoo. ....... For Google, who lives and dies by free, we dont know who their BlackSwan company will be. But we all know it will happen don’t we ? The only question is when..... The same will happen to Facebook, Twitter, pick any company who lives off of free. ...... Their better choice would be to run the company as profitably as possible, focusing only on those things that generate revenue and put cash in the bank. ........ ecognizing that they have a better chance of beating Facebook by investing in a company they think can pre empt Facebook than by trying to reconfigure MySpace to be that company.
Free vs Freely Distributed

First, there is no free. When you make money from ads, you are still making money. TV shows are free, but they run ads and make money. Is that free? I don't think so. If you are making money without directly charging your users, I think that is a tremendous business model.

And then there is free as in free but in the process you help build a brand. Step one, build a brand. Step two, monetize. Later. That is not free. As in, it is not business stupid. You don't make money on day one. But you make gobbles of money later.

Free is good. You get to cast your net wider.

People pay with their time, their attention. They give you mindspace. They pay, just not with money.

Google Search is free, but last I checked they were making ridiculous amounts of money. Are they stupid to not charge me two cents for every time I conduct a search?

Free is smart. But free is also the future. Free will win. The best offerings online will be ad-based. New forms of ads will emerge. For example, I take it for granted that Twitter will some day go public and will have a market valuation in the billions. You can bet it is not going to run banner ads like Yahoo in 1998.

And as a user I have no desire to pay for Twitter. Go figure.

Free is how Google beat Microsoft. Free is for winners. Free is smart, free is good, free is for the ages.

Free makes for a lean and thin business machine. It is a hassle to have to collect money from millions of people. It makes so much more sense to collect money from a few (or many) advertisers.

Or you can offer something for free, get a lot of people to use it, and sell it to someone else who might attempt monetization. You still made money when you sold. Why are you complaining?

Free also means you can go global, instantaneously. That is what the web is all about. The Internet is not America online. It is the humanity online, it is the World Wide Web. Pay attention to the first word: World.

Free means you don't have to deal with many currencies. Free means you don't have to worry if a user might have a credit card or not. As long as they come online and use your service is all that matters. Free is sweet.

There is free and then there is super cheap, and then there is below cost price, and then there of course is free free. You should be able to sell something below cost price for the same reasons you can offer stuff for free.

Mindfood - books, movies, music - is best served free, I think. Run ads, but offer them for free. And the web is the best distribution mechanism ever for mindfood. Technology has run leaps and bounds ahead of business models. You can't fight free, but you can make truckloads of money going along with it.

Free is the future. Hear me, Mark Cuban.

But by free I don't mean stolen: TechCrunch Has Linked To A Blog That Stole My Material.



  1. mark

    i’ve been writing a lot about this topic over the years and posted my thoughts on gladwell and anderson’s recent efforts yesterday

    http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/freemium-and-freeconomics.html

    i’m a big fan of free, freemium, and business models based on some form of free access to web services.

    i agree with you that technology is a fast moving industry and there is always a company around the corner who is going to take you down.

    but i don’t think that free makes you more vulnerable.

    in fact, i think paid makes you more vulnerable.

    craigslist hasn’t done much in the history of the company on its platform and UI and yet it continues to beat all comers in internet classifieds. why? because its mostly free.

    if it was mostly a paid service, i think it would be way more vulnerable to new entrants.

    i’m a big clayton christensen fan and he talks about how the companies that are going to take you down always come up from below. there isn’t much below free

    fred

    Comment by fredwilson — July 5, 2009 @ 8:37 pm

  2. Big fan of your blog Fred. I agree there isnt much below free. And that Craigslist, for now, is a stellar example of free working. On the flipside, MicroSoft and Oracle are longer term examples of companies who have battled free software for the ages. If you remember, MicroSoft Office, was all but free whenit was first introduced. You could upgrade from competitor products for nothing and buy the whole suite for 99 dollars. Then they evolved to paid and have survived. This of course could fall into your category of firms that live off of paid upgrades. Which IMHO, is the best model.

    Im a big fan of give them a free taste, then make them pay for upgrades. It is why I am still involved in a nicely profitable company, Filesanywhere.com, which competes with a company I used to be involved with, Box.net. Both offer online backups. One charges and uses that revenue to differentiate with upgraded services and customized services. The other used to charge (which is why i got involved), but now is facing the challenges of being primarily free.

    There are companies on both side of the argument, but I would rather be invested in a company that can afford to continue to invest in their products without depending on advertising, incredible volumes of traffic or raising more money.

    m

    Comment by markcuban — July 5, 2009 @ 9:28 pm

Fred Wilson

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Content Is Queen, Marketing Is Princess


How do you market your blog posts?

https://twitter.com/growline/status/1773172868
David Risley: Confessions Of A Six Figure Blogger

(1) Search Engine Optimization

If you got a great blog, most of your traffic is going to come through search engines. Tags are important. External links are important. Hyperlinks are important. For all three these days you got Zemanta. Use it.

Great, regular content hence is also good marketing. Content is queen.

(2) Mailing List

Got to build a mailing list for your blog. The one that I started using for this blog is over 9,000 strong. I decided on it yesterday. And look what I got.
"My name is ______ and I graduated Columbia J School in 2008 where I concentrated in broadcast. I work at ABC News in DC now (the network) and I am working on this idea of Job Hunting and the Internet--pretty much exactly what you posted in your blog below. I am wondering if maybe we could talk on the phone about this idea."
One email a day, with five links to five blog posts: do you think that will work?

(3) Comments Sections Of Other Blogs

Like minded blogs. Celebrity blogs. If you are passionate about what you are passionate about, it is not possible you don't regularly read at least a dozen blogs that share your passion. Engage your favorite bloggers in their comments sections. Link to your blog from their comments sections. That helps jack up your Google rank. And that is a good thing.





JP, Confused Of Calcutta, is a big shot. I have never met him, but I think of him as a friend. He is CIO of British Telecom. I once came across a list in some magazine where Google CEO Eric Schmidt was number six, and JP was number 12. I really like his blog, that is why I visit his blog and participate in his comments sections. But that participation also jacks up my own blog's Google rank. I am not complaining.

I grew up watching Amitabh Bachchan. This here is me in 1993. Amitabh just so happens to be the most recognized face on the planet. His blog lets me interact with him and read his mind the way a handshake will not. In his comments sections, I have hope I will meet him one day. And, by the way, Amitabh was in Calcutta before he moved to Mumbai.

I am a New Yorker. I take pride in the New York Times. It is a good idea for me to leave comments in some of their blog's comments sections and hyperlink my name to my own blog.
I really like it that when I link to an article on the Google Blog, my blog shows up at the bottom of that post at the Google Blog. I am flattered, what can I say?

Mark Cuban is a loud mouth. I think that is a good thing for my blogging.

Huffington Post does Facebook and Mashable does Disqus. They don't make me create a separate account with them or fill up basic info before I can leave a comment. And they both have huge traffic. So it is a very good idea to participate in their comments sections. Read a post, then say what you have to say, and leave a link to one of your blog posts that might go with the theme. Or just leave a link to your blog.

And, by the way, Disqus is like Zemanta, a must have, also Add This. Also Google Analytics.

But primarily, you are looking to make friends in comments sections. Passionate bloggers with small traffic might have time for you. Get to know them.

Another way to figure out which comments sections to visit is by using Blogsearch. Make a blog post, then search the key term for your blog post. Relevant blog posts will show up. Read and comment and link back to your blog post. The weirdest part of the exercise though is that most blogs out there don't do Disqus, at least not yet. But the nice ones just ask for your name, email address, not to be published but required, they say, and website address. The not nice ones expect you to register with them. I almost always walk away when I see that red flag.

(4) Twitter Is A Versatile Broadcast Medium

Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter was a good decision. These two have been helping me expand my base: TopFollowed, MyTweetFollowers. And then you got SocialToo, Adjix, and TweetDeck.

The reason you want to follow everyone who follows you is because the Direct Message option is a great one. It is like a politician saying hello to you on the campaign trail. That is not shallow. He/she is not pretending to be family.

My Relationship With Ashton Kutcher

Twitterfeed is as grand as TweetDeck. Thanks to Twitterfeed, as of yesterday, my Netizen blog, this blog, BusinessWeek, CNet, and Digg will all feed my Twitter feed without me doing anything about it. Manual feeding is history.

(5) Facebook Notes

My blog is integrated with my Facebook account. So a new blog post shows up as a note in my Facebook stream. And I like to tag friends to those notes, so I show up in their Facebook stream as well. That is a fancy way of saying hello.

(6) Feeds

Don't allow feeds access to your full content. Give out the first paragraph. Let people show up at your blog if they want to see the whole thing.

Content Is Queen
Blogging: Monkey Business?
Blogging = Learning + Teaching + Churning + Entertaining
Spamming Om Malik
Digg Button, Twitter Button For Your Blog Posts
Blogging Several Times A Day
Blogging Tips
A Blogger Is Also An Editor
Blog Daily
Where Have You Placed Your Ads?
Sites That Pay You To Blog



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