Sunday, April 03, 2011

Mike Yavonditte: An Hour Of Video



Okay so it is not an hour of Mike. When you have Jason Calacanis doing the interviewing, the guy feels like he is half the guest himself, and so this is 30 minutes of Jason and 30 minutes of Mike. But it's a good interview. Jason being an entrepreneur himself has really been able to bring out the story from Mike. It was an hour well spent for me.

Anup Kaphle: Cricket Is Not Baseball, Stop Comparing

"Understanding cricket is not that difficult — just stop comparing it to baseball."
- Anup Kaphle




India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup

Why Raissa Nebie Loves Tumblr

Zaho: Kif'n'dir



(Via Raissa B. Nebie)
Technology And Social Justice

P-Square: E No Easy



(Via Raissa B. Nebie)
Technology And Social Justice

Technology And Social Justice


Technology, on its own, ends up magnifying the status quo of social inequality. That was a comment I made to a post by The Gotham Gal a few days back.

Owning Equity, Owning House

Image representing Chris Dixon as depicted in ...Image via CrunchBase
Chris Dixon: Eric Ries: a downturn will come in the next few years (most likely not a true revenue/profit downturn but early stage valuation + coolness downturn) ..... one of the worst things happening now is that companies lie to employees and only tell them the # of shares they own and not the % they own ...... the 21st century will be about convincing people that they should think about owning part of their employer the same way people in the 20th century wanted to own their house ...... the idea of creating a stock exchange where when you bought stocks you were force to hold them 4-5 years ...... he was probably the smartest and most interesting person I've heard in years ...... us "liberals" (me, Eric, Fred Wilson) who believe that hedge fund managers should pay the same tax rate as firefighters who run into burning buildings are in radical agreement about increasing the carried interest tax. Unfortunately every other VC seems to disagree with us. Looks like we lost this one and so need to move on. +1 for aristocrats. ..... ) being more scientific about how to help these companies succeed on less capital
Chris Dixon does not think we are in a bubble. Neither do I. But I was surprised to learn he also thinks we are a few years from a downturn, what I have called a mini bubble burst. It will not be like 2000 when it looked like the entire industry collapsed. But there will be plenty of winnowing out.

A Surprising Blog Post From Fred Wilson

Warren Buffett speaking to a group of students...Image via Wikipedia
Fred Wilson: Going Out On Top: Then, at the top of their game, LCD decided to call it quits. They played four shows this past week at Terminal 5, and then played their last show ever at The Garden last night. It's over now. As we watched the band put on a fantastic show last night, I was thinking about going out on top. So few manage to do it. Shaq is warming the bench in Boston. ..... The money and the burning desire to "win another one" drives the great ones to stick around too long. ..... I look at Warren Buffett and Rupert Murdoch and I see individuals still enjoying the work and delivering for their shareholders and investors into their 80s. ..... But I also look around the venture capital business and I see investors who were at the top of their games in the 90s struggling to remain relevant. ...... How do you know when you've done your last great startup? How do you know when you've done your last great investment? How do you know when you don't have the drive, hunger, and insights to keep delivering top performance? ...... Right now, coming off two weeks of totally relaxing vacation with my family, I find myself up early, thinking, writing, and planning. I don't sense it is yet time to hang up my cleats or walk of the stage like James Murphy did last night. But the thought is in my mind and I want it to stay there. The investment business is not easy. You are only as good as your last trade, fund, or year. And the venture capital business is particulary tricky. All the returns in the business accrue to the top ten or, at best, twenty percent of investors. When you lose your edge, your performance suffers, often badly. But it can take a decade for the rest of the world to notice because there is so much latency in the venture capital business.
My favorite solo blogger just surprised me like never before. The thought of "going out on top" seems to have crossed his mind.

LCD SoundSystem: Losing My Edge



(Via Tobias Peggs)

Some Table Tennis



(Via Joe Gebbia)

Saturday, April 02, 2011

India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup



In India everything has a tendency to get mixed up with Bollywood. Sachin was named after a Bollywood musician. That should tell you.

One way you know I grew up in Nepal and not India is I don't "get" cricket. I tend to only watch the highlights. Even then I pay as much attention to the background music as to the game. But I hear cricket has also taken over Nepal since I left. My thing is soccer. Note Sachin's Maradona hair. Sachin wears the number 10 shirt, just like Pele and Maradona.

Cricket is to India what soccer is to Brazil. I grew up watching people glued to their radio sets following audio commentaries of ongoing cricket matches.


StartUp Week At NYU April 6-15


April 6, Wed, Mark Suster (@msuster) NYU 6-9 PM

April 7, Thu, Brad Feld (@bfeld), Adam Rich, and Nate Westheimer (@innonate) 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM NYU Law School (Vanderbilt Hall), Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South

Monday, 4/11: Develop, Design, Pitch Series mongoDB (@mongodb) Kevin Kearney (@kkearney) and Courtney Lewis of Hard Candy Shell Eric Friedman (@EricFriedman) 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM Kaufman Management Center Room M1-100 44 W 4th St

Tuesday, 4/12: Variety of Tech Entrepreneurs Panel 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM Room M1-100 Spencer Fry (@spencerfry), Carbonmade Hilary Mason (@hmason) bit.ly Vin Vacanti (@vacanti), Yipit Yasser Ansari (@trisomy21), Project Noah Seth Frader-Thompson (@fraderT), EnergyHub Colin Freund (@Swimmingloaf), Agennix AG James McChullouhgh, Exosome Diagnostics

Wednesday, 4/13: Online Communities 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM The Courant Institute 251 Mercer Street, Room 109 Kyle Bragger (@kylebragger), Forrst Chris Maguire (@revolvingdork), Postling Joe Alminawi, OMGPOP Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa), Neighborhoodr Vanessa Bertozzi (@Van_Bertozzi), Etsy Peter Rojas (@peterrojas), gdgt

Thursday, 4/14: Fundraising: VCs, Angels and Accelerators Chris Dixon (@cdixon), Albert Wenger (@albertwenger), Lawrence Lenihan (@lawrencelenihan), Firstmark Capital, Hilary Gosher (@hilbil175), Insite Venture Partners, David Tisch (@davetisch), TechStars

The Organizers of StartUp Week