Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Who Is Andrew Parker?


Blog Daily is Fred Wilson's mantra. Many people know him as a venture capitalist. I know him primarily as a blogger. He is my favorite solo blogger by far. So a few minutes back I showed up at his blog, and this is what I saw.

Fred Wilson: Bidding Andrew Goodbye

That blog post linked over to this one, also written by Fred Wilson.

Union Square Ventures: Bidding Goodbye To Andrew

By the time I was going through the comments at that blog post, I realized I was already following this guy on Tumblr without realizing he worked for Union Square Ventures. I found him through Nina who I found through Scoble.

Andrew Parker: ... Boston Bound, Leaving USV And Next Steps

Fred Wilson, July 2006: Looking For The Right Person
Brad Burnham, August 2006: Welcome Andrew Parker
Charlie O'Donnell, July 2006: Leaving Union Square Ventures: My Other Name Is An Avatar ....

Right now I am in a mood to do round 1 work for my startup part time while working a job. I have sent out a few feelers seeking a social media job of some kind. But that might feel like a deviation from my path. I am not aspiring to be a media guy, social or otherwise. This USV job might be a dream job for someone with my aspirations, but I am not sure they might go for me. And, curiously, I would like to start out by giving them some reasons why they should not hire me.
  1. I am going to be working on my startup idea part time, on the side. I am not walking away from it.
  2. I might stick around for about a year max. So if you are looking for someone who will be with you at least two years, I am not your guy. But when I leave it will be because I have decided to go full time with my startup, there will be no other reason. I'd give you a month's notice.
  3. I don't have a good track record of putting up with authority. I have never really had a corporate job. Even a job has to feel entrepreneurial to me. Can't be a cog.
  4. I am not a white male. There was this group photo somewhere I saw last year, or maybe before, it had all the top young tech entrepreneurs in town. The first thing I noticed was every single one of them was a white guy. I recognized only one, the MeetUp CEO Scott, a friend. Now that I also know Sam Lessin, the Dropio guy, I am pretty sure he was also in there. I have a pretty sophisticated understanding of race. I was one of Obama's earliest people in the city, and I got to become friends with many of the top Obama volunteers in town in all five boroughs, many of them white. But then I am used to not being part of groups with total cultural overlaps with me since I was 10. Makes me very individualistic as a result. I am big on personal space in my own way. In Nepal it was ethnicity in a boarding school environment - talk about The Other, in Kentucky it was race.
Some of the reasons I might like the job:
  1. I a-m looking for a job. If I get it, round 1 feels like so much less pressure. I am not having to pay myself a salary, however low, through my startup. I might even save some money and pump that into my startup. I don't need much.
  2. This would be a dream job.
  3. Going to tech events in town is not cutting it for me no more. I need something stronger.
  4. This USV experience might be the detox I need after a few years of hard core, cutting edge political work.
  5. The tech startup ambience, the people you will meet, the expanded personal network.
  6. Getting a better feel for the NY tech  ecosystem.
  7. Fred Wilson. If I so enjoy interacting with him at his blog, that enjoyment must be greater by so many degrees in person. This guy is as good as they come. In the world of movies, they have Scorsese. In the world of venture capital, they got AVC. This guy is a legend in the making. I have higher regard for him than VCs with more money than him. He is really good at what he does. He was born to be a VC. (Fred Wilson's Insight)
  8. I am on the L line. They are on the L line. It only struck me a few days back that USV is perhaps named after Union Square. For the longest time I thought, so the Square is the square like in geometry, what is Union?
  9. I like it that they are a small team. Three is the Google number. Three seems to be the USV number. Google works on the premise that three is as big as a team should get. 
  10. I absolutely am loving it that they are asking not for a resume but a blog. This blog will do it for them. Well then, here goes. You have this blog. And you can click over to all my social media presences from this blog itself. Give me a job, if not at least give me some page hits. :-) Best, make me an offer. 
This is what I looked like when I showed up in town summer of 2005.




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Measuring Your Twitter Influence

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase
My Relationship With Ashton Kutcher
  1. How many people follow you?
  2. How often they retweet you?
  3. How often is your name mentioned?
Those are the three measures being pointed out by this research paper. In my case, (2) and (3) are the same. My first name is my Twitter name. When you retweet me, when you reply to me, you mention my name.

Just when I am getting in a mood to increase my interaction levels on the Twitter platform, this research paper came my way. I am surprised they did not list a fourth metric: (4) How many times have you been listed? A subset of that item might be: (5) How many people are following those lists?

Twitter Visualization: Reading Many Tweets At Once
New Yorker, New York Times Style, Twitter And Me
Finally, Twitter Ads
Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO
I Have Access To Twitter Lists
Jeff Jarvis, Me And Twitter
I Must Be Following A Lot Of People On Twitter
NYC Twitter Elite: Number 12
Twitter Top 100 NYC: I Am In
Twitter Top 100 NYC
Make Money On Twitter
Twitter Top 0.1%
Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google
Twitter Number 115 In New York City
Twitter, TechCrunch, And The Stolen Docs
The Best Follow Friday I Ever Received On Twitter
Space, Time And Twitter: Are There Plant Twitters?
My Twitter Suspension Lifted
Can Tweet Google, Can't Tweet Twitter
Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas
How To Increase Your Following On Twitter
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Real Time Search: Twitter Is Not Doing It
Google Falling Behind Twitter?
Eminem: The Relapse: Twitter
Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter
NewsDesk: China, Twitter, Hawking, Obama
Digg Button, Twitter Button For Your Blog Posts
Twitter Is Not Micro
The Depth Of Your Friendships At Twitter
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
Twitter And The Time Dimension
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
I Get Twitter


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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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