Fred Wilson's Gift To Me

Getting To Know Fred Wilson

I first came across the AVC.com blog. Frankly I thought the name was cheesy. VCs are not supposed to have blogs, I thought. VCs are supposed to be inaccessible, working in smoke filled rooms. A blog is the opposite of a smoke filled room.

Then I started visiting the blog once in a while, after having bookmarked it and not visited for months. I started liking it. It was a decent blog. It was interesting. The blog posts touched on many current topics of interest to me.

Then I started liking it a lot.

I got excited about Zemanta and Disqus before I realized they were Fred Wilson's portfolio companies. That made me respect the guy. It was only a matter of time before I realized he was an investor in Twitter, and sat on the Twitter Board. That was a big nugget to have come across in 2009. 2009 was Twitter's year. During the first half everyone was talking about Twitter. The icing on the cake was to realize no, Twitter did not pitch Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson pitched Twitter.

I like vision people. Clearly Fred Wilson was a visionary.

I wish there were a few top tech entrepreneurs who were as avid bloggers as Fred Wilson is. That would be a triumph. I wish all of the very top tech entrepreneurs were avid bloggers. Not even Kevin Rose is, and he is not exactly the topmost entrepreneur. Fred Wilson kind of stands out in the tech industry that way.

And then I realized Geocities also had been part of Fred's portfolio. I was a Geocities guy back in the days, an avid user. I was sad when Yahoo shut down Geocities recently. Geocities was the original online community.

Fred Wilson did not need to prove to me no more. This cat's got something going on, I thought.

Fred Wilson's Insight
Happy Holi
Fred Wilson: VC
Fred Wilson: A VC
Fred Wilson

AVC, Not For Me

If you are an early stage entrepreneur, you are, of course, looking to find the VC types. For a while I thought of pitching Fred. We even exchanged a few emails. If he was not going to come in himself, he was going to lead me to some people. But I was too early stage. Like too. And I did not articulate myself well.

Then I was resigned to the fact I just don't fall in his domain expertise zone. He does "web services." I am absolutely not in the dot com space.

But that did not change the fact that he was a visionary in the tech industry, and he had become my favorite solo blogger. I very rarely emailed him, but when I did, he replied. That was and is a big deal.

Maybe A VC For Me

But I was not going to give up. You can't bemoan not having a 200 billion dollar tech company in New York City, and stay stuck in the dot com space. I took a friendly swing at Fred Wilson in a blog post. When I started work on that blog post, I had no intention to do so. But a few paragraphs later I was doing it. What the heck, I thought. Tell it like it is. (Fred Wilson's Insight)

Fred Wilson's Gift To Me

Finally it happened. Fred Wilson gave his gift to me. It happened in his comments section to this blog post: Yochai Benkler On TheBroadband Plan. Yes, he is open to going beyond the dot com space, he will invest in broadband if the spectrum is opened up. Opening up the spectrum is a political battle. I am well suited for a political fight like that one. Taking a singular focus to a revolutionary proposition. I could do that. I am itching for the fight.

My Comment:

"There isn't enough competition on the access side of the Internet, both wireline and broadband. The rest of the Internet stack is hypercompetitive and is innovating at a mile a minute. But in access, we have monopolies who go at whatever speed suits them. There's nothing pushing them to go faster."

Finally, for the first time, Fred Wilson and I are "talking."

(1) Hardware (2) Software (3) Connectivity.

Paul Allen wanted MSFT to do both hardware and software. Bill Gates vetoed that. He said no, only software. He was right. But by now the biggest virgin territories are in sector three: Connectivity. That is where the big fortunes stand to be made. Hardware and software will hum along, but the biggest disruptions stand to be made in sector three. The dot com space is kinda saturated by comparison, although that space will always stay fertile because the human mind never satiates. But sector three is where big things will be done in the next push.

Fred Wilson's Comment:

i think you may be right, but i am scared of the capital costs involved. if wireless spectrum was dregulated, i might get interested

My Comment:

"....if wireless spectrum was dregulated...."

That has to be the primary push.

That is all the opening I need. This fight is not entirely as complicated as what happened in Nepal in April 2006. (The First Major Revolution Of The 21st Century Happened In Nepal) This tech entrepreneurship challenge speaks to my political strengths.

My company wants to bring hundreds of millions of new people online. Internet access is the voting right for this 21st century. Take me to the fight.

Andrew Parker

And then Andrew Parker happened out of the blue. I'd love to do a May 2010-May 2011 stint with Union Square Ventures. I think my startup will have covered more ground in three years with this stint than without it. I hope I get to do it: fingers crossed.

Who Is Andrew Parker?

Fred Wilson (financier) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Twitter Employees Cheerlead Top Investor's Bombshell Post...‎

Net Neutrality Is The Internet's DNA
Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem
Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea
Startups And Immigrants
Fat Can Work, But Lean More Often Does
Measuring Your Twitter Influence
The New York City Subway
Broader Broadband
Tumblr: Casey, Nina, David, Fred
Broad Broadband
Silicon Valley Vs. New York City
The Foursquare Rap: Badges Like Us
Location! Location! Location!
An Immigrant Story For Brad Feld
Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown
Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising
I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla

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Net Neutrality Is The Internet's DNA

Fred Wilson: Internet Freedom

..... the net neutrality camp (which I am very much in) is on its heels .... the era of permissionless innovation that has characterized the first fifteen years of the commercial Internet ....... If we lose Internet Freedom, we won't have any companies we would want to invest in and we'll close up shop and move on with our lives.

Albert Wegner: The Price Of Internet Freedom Is?

Here there is much less of a market force at work as a potential corrective because in many local markets there is only a single broadband provider available and at best most markets have a duopoly.

Wall Street Journal: Court Backs Comcast Over FCC On "Net Neutrality"

"The court in no way disagreed with the importance of preserving a free and open Internet, nor did it close the door to other methods for achieving this important end," said FCC spokeswoman Jen Howard........ the idea that Internet providers should treat all forms of Web traffic equally ...... The court's decision prompted calls Tuesday from Democrats and consumer groups for Congress to pass new legislation to give the FCC more authority to police Internet providers. "They may have won the battle only to face a larger war" ...... Republican lawmakers have generally opposed net-neutrality rules. ....... AT&T said the FCC's current net-neutrality principles work and it will continue to abide by them. ....... Verizon Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg said, it isn't a "slam dunk" that net neutrality is the right policy. ...... Time Warner Cable Inc. said the decision doesn't change its commitment to providing the "high-quality, open Internet experience" its customers expect...... President Obama supports net-neutrality rules

Daily Kos: What Happens Now With Net Neutrality

...... Comcast, which has asserted its right to slow its own cable customers' access to file-sharing ........ not an out and out win for Comcast .... there are a number of ways forward from here for the FCC. ..... the Supreme Court might reverse ..... The Supreme Court might disagree. ...... Congress might amend the Federal Communications Act to create a new source of jurisdiction to regulate broadband. To do this one would need at least 60 votes in the Senate. Good luck with that........ under its Title II jurisdiction, the FCC can require open access requirements, which would be even more valuable for purposes of promoting freedom of speech and innovation. ....... the FCC might decide that the better solution is to retrace its steps, correct the mistake it made in 2002, and reassert Title II authority over broadband ..... an FCC that under chairman Genachowski has been a strong Net Neutrality advocate

TechDirt: Court Tells FCC It Has No Mandate To Enforce Net Neutrality (And That's A Good Thing)

......it's now official that the FCC has no power to mandate net neutrality or to punish Comcast (even with a gentle wrist slap) for its traffic shaping practices. Lots of people seem upset by this, but they should not be. ......Even if you believe net neutrality is important, allowing the FCC to overstep its defined boundaries is not the best way to deal with it...... Comcast .. should still be punished -- but by the FTC, rather than the FCC -- for misleading its customers about what type of service they were getting, and what the limitations were on those services. As for the FCC, if it really wants a more neutral net, it should focus on making sure that there's real competition in the market, rather than just paying lip service to the idea in its broadband plan.

Net neutrality is the Internet's DNA. This is the Internet Century. Take away free speech and America is just a landmass. Take away net neutrality and the Internet is glorified cable television. It is not the Internet no more.

Net neutrality has received a temporary setback. But the anxieties are very real. Net neutrality is here to stay, but that does not mean there isn't work cut out for the net neutrality enthusiasts, which is pretty much everyone I know.

This judicial decision reminds me of the Supreme Court decision against campaign finance reform a few months back that Obama spoke against in his State Of The Union speech. The judiciary is capable of nonsensical decisions. This is one of them. One reason might be the judges are not term limited like the politicians. Maybe there ought to be a 12 year term limit rule for the Supreme Court justices.

We are nowhere close to losing the net neutrality fight, but the fight we have not even waged yet is the fight that will bring true competition in the high speed internet access arena. It is the fight to release the spectrum. The spectrum war needs to be taken to Comcast's doors.  

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Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

Measuring Your Twitter Influence
Who Is Andrew Parker?
Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea
Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever
Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO
My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp

Fred Wilson: The Twitter Platform's Inflection Point (My Comment)

"Twitter really should have had all of that when it launched or it should have built those services right into the Twitter experience." 

There you go. That has been my point. Twitter needs to eat into its ecosystem. Windows did that. Bill Gates' last threat was he was going to incorporate antivirus software right into Windows. Good thing for Norton that he retired instead.

And Twitter needs to appeal more to the mainstream users. The first page is not welcoming for new users. For one, it is cluttered. Tumblr could teach here.

One way to eat into the ecosystem is to go on a buying spree. For that you need money. You get that money by going public. (Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO)

You should hire me and put me to work on this. (Who Is Andrew Parker?)

Don't get me wrong. Blogger remains my favorite social media platform (My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp) And my enthusiasm for Twitter is well documented. (Measuring Your Twitter Influence) It is not possible I lack respect for Evan Williams. But I think I can help.

Hire me for a year, and let this be my first project. :-) Seriously.

10 years back a lot of people wanted to go online so they could get Hotmail. Twitter has to reach that level of appeal.

" I think the time for filling the holes in the Twitter service has come and gone."

True. But not true. 2009 was Twitter's year. True. 2010 is the year for location, random connections and the inbox, as I see it so far. That list might look different in six months, I don't know.

But Twitter could still do it. It needs to eat into its ecosystem.

Right now I feel like Bill Clinton felt when he was applying for colleges. The dude applied to just one college: Georgetown in DC. He wanted to be in DC, Georgetown was a good college, and it had a strong foreign service program. Right now when I have decided to get the first real job of my life and to postpone work on my startup by about a year, I find myself wanting to work at Union Square Ventures and no place else. The more I think about it, the more I want to do it. There are currents and counter currents of thoughts.

• Fred Wilson is too big for me. 
• They might not even hire me. 
• They will definitely not hire me. 
• What am I thinking?

Some of the counter currents:

• What if I end up being a VC in a year? That would be horror. I have enormous respect for VCs, but I don't want to be one. 30 years from now I want to be known for a company I created.
• What if it feels like a corporate job? What if it is not entrepreneurial enough?
• There must be holes in my abilities. There most definitely are if the idea is to find a photocopy of Andrew Parker. Andrew Parker's tumblog is definitely better than mine.

What I want.

• I do want it, and I am going to do my best this month to try and get it. But I am not going to email Fred, although I have emailed him several times on frivolous topics like, well, Happy Holi Fred Wilson. (Happy Holi) If they want me, they will email me. If they get someone else, I will read about it on Fred's blog that I have taken to reading daily. His mantra: blog daily. My mantra: read daily.
• Doing my best is to put out a series of blog posts at my blog. They are not asking for a resume, they are asking for a blog. That is insurance that this is going to feel like a startup, and not some ossified corporation.
• Words like guru, don come to mind. Fred Wilson is a big shot who is hugely accessible. I mean, the guy has a blog that is so good he could be mistaken for a pro blogger. 
• I want a decent six figure salary.
• Can I do 10-6? I don't need a lunch break. But I am not going to be happy working only 40 hours a week. I have that personality type that wants to work long hours. But I like flexibility in how I spend some of those hours. What is the USV version of Google's 20% time? Let me spend 20% of my time going to events in town and networking in the industry, hanging out with startup people. 
• Take Twitter public in 2010 before Facebook. I want that to be my first project. If I fail, I am just a guy with a six figure salary. If I succeed, I want a percentage. So if USV owns 10% of Twitter - I don't know what it owns, it is very likely less - I want to end up owning 1% of Twitter, something like that.
• Invest in Chatroulette, help it avoid the Twitter mistakes, turn it into the leading Random Connections service.
• Help take FourSquare to the next level.
• Find the next FourSquare. 
• These are some of the things I would want to work on.
• Andrew's title was Analyst. I want mine to be Junior Partner. He has a better tumblog than I do, but other than that I bring more to the table. 
• It might be a good idea to hire one a half people plus an intern. One would be me. 
• I have never had health insurance. Push ups have been my idea of health insurance so far. If I am hired, to me it is going to feel like Obama made Fred Wilson give me health insurance. Okay, okay, that sentence sounds convoluted, but I did put numerous hours into Obama 08. (Jupiter And Obama, Switching To Obama)
• The tweet is to the web what the atom is to the universe. Twitter has to prove that. Twitter is lucky that there is no Gowalla around, but it sure needs to feel the time pressure. 

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Andreessen, Conway, Hornik

The iPad

Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea

A few days back the image above started showing up when I loaded Farmville for me. And I am like, yes! I suggested this directly to Mark Pincus. He said he liked the idea, but that was a while back. Looks like finally he has gotten around to doing it.

I came to Farmville late. I have not been much of a gamer. But Farmville was talked about so much in the blogosphere. And the TechCrunch dude Mike Arrington had just given the game quite a beating. Some of my friends were on the game. What had most got me interested was there were reports Farmville was using the Facebook platform to beat Facebook itself in the monetization game. That piqued my interest. It also helped that I grew up in a farming family. Have you watched the milking of the cow/buffalo - by hand - the milk that you drank an hour later? I have.

So I got onto the game and was hooked. So hooked I went on to become the richest farmer in my neighborhood, bought a million dollar villa, and so on.

My Facebook Photo Album: Farmville

Note, Anu Shukla is one of my neighbors. She just might be my very best neighbor. And, by now, she has the most beautiful farm in my entire neighborhood. She has really taken to farming these past few weeks. There is something to be said of people who sell their companies for hundreds of millions of dollars. When they take to farming, they really take to farming.

Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising
I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla

I have said several times in Fred Wilson's comments sections, (Fred Wilson's Insight) and I will say it again, Farmville is the media savior, it is not the iPad. Look at the Farmville business model, 99% of the users do not pay anything, and Mark Pincus is not up in arms about it. In fact, Farmville has been teaching Facebook how to make money. Trying to walk away from the browser is not a good idea. Trying to create artificial scarcities and artificially high prices is not a good idea.

And, while you are at it, call the firefighter.



This is from Social Media Week in early February. (Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever)

Startups And Immigrants

Thomas Friedman, New York Times: Start-Ups, Not Bailouts

“Between 1980 and 2005, virtually all net new jobs created in the U.S. were created by firms that were 5 years old or less,” said Litan. “That is about 40 million jobs. That means the established firms created no new net jobs during that period.” ..... “Roughly 25 percent of successful high-tech start-ups over the last decade were founded or co-founded by immigrants,” said Litan. ...... What made America this incredible engine of prosperity? It was immigration, plus free markets...... “We ought to have a ‘job-creators visa’ for people already here,” said Litan. “And once you’ve hired, say, 5 or 10 American nonfamily members, you should get a green card.”

Voices like that of Friedman are important because we are about to embark upon the great national debate on comprehensive immigration reform. The success on health care will make it easier to wade through this new debate because success will be a foregone conclusion, but some of the debate is going to be nasty. We have to brace for that. Free speech can try you sometimes.

Fred Wilson: Immigration Reform And The Jobs Bill

Links: April 2

Charlie O'Donnell: Rainy Day At The Ace
ReadWriteWeb: Tellmewhere Makes Location-Based Social Networking More Useful
Fred Wilson: Do Network Effects Span Geographies?
Robert Scoble: Are Location Geeks At Where 2.0 Off The Path To Real Money?
ReadWriteWeb: Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login
Startup Strategy Roundtable: Beyond Validating Your Ideas
Blog Of Note: Sramana Mitra On Strategy
ReadWriteWeb: Chatroulette Clones: A New Market for Random Connections
Gmail Becomes an App Platform: Google Adds OAuth to IMAP
Life's Too Short: I'm Getting an iPad Right Away
Harvard Grad on Why MBAs Stumble Off the Blocks
Cracking Facebook's Dominance: New Cross-Network Commenting Protocol Could Be a Game Changer

News: March 30

CNet: Brightcove Eyes iPad Flash Void With HTML 5
Time: US UK Special Relationship Is Over
CNet: Clearwire 4G Launches In Houston
Time: Is A Biometric Identity Card The Key To Immigration Reform?
TechCrunch: Apple Market Cap Passes $210 Billion, Now Within $50 Billion Of You-Know-Who
Mashable: Apple To Launch Two New iPhones, One For Verizon
TechCrunch: Hello iPad, Hello Cloud 2
TechCrunch: Gruber Hints At Possible Next-Gen iPhone Specs ... Sort Of
Mashable: Minnesota's Governor To Host Town Hall Via Facebook
GlobalThoughtz: China Is Not Alone, Germany Has Web Censorship Too

Sergey Brin's Is The Right Stand

Sergey's family had to flee Russia when Sergey was less than 10 years old. They fled political persecution. Memories like that never go away.

The Google leadership might present it like a group decision, but it has been so obvious to me Sergey has taken the lead on this one.

I grew up in a country that only recently became a republic. The country was a monarchy with a rubber stamp parliament - no political parties allowed - for most of my time. Democracy to me is as concrete as a brick wall. There is free speech, and there is no free speech, and the difference is stark. There are very real consequences.

My first reaction to the Google blog post of threatening to move out of China was unequivocal. No, this is not Google saying sour grapes to not being able to dominate search in China like it does elsewhere. This was a principled stand. And I admired it. I put it down in writing, I think as a comment on Facebook. I have always been fascinated by Google. I had it displayed on my personal homepage not long after the search engine showed up late in the 1990s before they had done any serious fundraising. But I never admired Google more until now. This Google-China standoff speaks to me at many levels.

What Google is doing is the right thing to do, and it is also going to prove to be a great business decision down the line.

To many Chinese the Chinese Communist Party is what the NAACP had been for the blacks. The CCP is going to bring back their ancient glory. Less than 1,000 years ago China was the leading country on earth. America did not even exist as a country.

China's economic growth these past few decades has been amazing. I have said it before and I will say it again, China needs to teach the rest of the Global South how to grow like China.

I want John Liu to at some point become Mayor of New York City. I do have the Asian pride thing going on. But it is that same pride that makes me firmly conclude China can not remain a one party dictatorship forever.

Free speech is the most fundamental of human rights on which all the other human rights rest.

And John Liu was born in Taiwan. And I am a Buddhist like the Tibetans.

A dictatorship is more likely to go to war, or more likely to engage in saber rattling. Iran's intransigence would go away if the democracy movement in that country were to succeed. China's border problems with India are in a big part to do with the fact that China is not a democracy. The idea of two nuclear powers going to war over pieces of rocks in the barren Himalayas is not exactly 21st century.

The future for China is one where both Taiwan and Tibet stay part of China, but that China is federal and democratic. Tibet and Taiwan are states inside a federal China. There is multi-party democracy. Human rights are respected.

But it does not have to be a democracy like America. It can opt to be a multi-party democracy of state-funded parties. The nature of democracy can be even more refined than what America has, but free speech is more fundamental. Human rights are elemental.

And a country that is not democratic, that does not accept human rights as a basic value can grow fast only when it is playing catch up, but it will stall once it is done catching up, and it has to depend on human creativity to create new industries, and come up with new inventions.

Manmohan Singh in India has proven a large, poor democracy can also achieve China-like growth rates. So it is not like democracy gets in the way.

I greatly admire Sergey's stand. Free speech is so basic. And until this stand it looked like the world was in a mood to stay in permanent peace with the idea of a one party dictatorship in China. The Chinese inside China could not do it. The foreign powers would not do it. Who would take the stand? Who will tie the bell around the cat's neck?

This stand by Google might be the beginning of the end for the one party dictatorship in China. And if it is, Sergey will be remembered as much for this as for his algorithms more than a decade ago. This is not an anti-China stand. This is an anti-persecution stand.

Sergey had to flee when he was young. This is him going back into that same arena. He is going to fight back with all he's got. And he has a lot.

Technology does not exist in a vacuum. Innovation does not happen in a vacuum. People are the purpose for technological innovation. Political and social issues matter. You want to organize the world's information because that will better people's lives. That is the only reason. People matter. People are at the core. People everywhere.

Sergey's stand is a pro-China stand.

Every tussle between democracy and dictatorship in history has been bloody. Fascism's defeat was bloody. Communism's defeat in Europe was bloody over decades, and across the world. Islamists are bloody in their ways. But one day all Arab countries will become democratic. That leaves China as the last bastion. Maybe we can make that confrontation not bloody. And Google is showing the way.

I am a Google person like some people are Apple people. I love Google. I have a feeling my first smartphone is going to be the Nexus One. (The iPhone, Nexus One, Or Droid?)



Jessica Vascellaro, The Wall Street Journal: Brin Drove Google To Pull Back In China Sergey Brin pushed the Internet giant to take the risky step of abandoning its China-based search engine as that country's efforts to censor the Web and suppress dissidents smacked of the "totalitarianism" of his youth in the Soviet Union. .... "One out of five meetings that I attended, there was some component specifically applied to China in a different way than other countries." ...... Mr. Brin and other executives prevailed over Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and others who felt Google ought to stay the course in China ...... Mitch Kapor, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, said Google's moral stand made sense long term, because China will eventually get more open...... "One of the reasons I am glad we are making this move in China is that the China situation was really emboldening other countries to try and implement their own firewalls," Mr. Brin said...... he was moved by growing evidence in China of repressive behavior reminiscent of what he remembered from the Soviet Union. Mr. Brin said memories of that time—having his home visited by Russian police, witnessing anti-Semitic discrimination against his father—bolstered his view that it was time to abandon Google's policy.......... . His father, he said, wanted to be an astrophysicist, but because of discrimination became a mathematician.
John Paczkowski, All Things Digital: Beijing: “Google is Not God” Google’s principled stand in China has very quickly turned into an ugly clash with the country’s government...... "Thinking about the US’ big efforts in recent years to engage in Internet war, perhaps this could be an exploratory pre-dawn battle."..... directing Chinese searches to an uncensored search engine based in Hong Kong, essentially using Beijing’s “one country, two systems” policy against it. ..... indexing Twitter posts on its Chinese search site in open defiance of the country’s ban on the microblogging site.

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Fat Can Work, But Lean More Often Does

Ben Horowitz: The Case For The Fat StartUp

There are only two priorities for a start-up: Winning the market and not running out of cash. Running lean is not an end..... Sometimes running fat is the right thing to do.....Running fat meant that I laid off zero software engineers so that we could keep on investing in our technology, find our product/market fit, and build a lasting technological advantage..... the only thing worse for an entrepreneur than start-up hell (bankruptcy) is start-up purgatory..... Start-up purgatory occurs when you don’t go bankrupt, but you fail to build the No. 1 product in the space.

Fred Wilson: Being Fat Is Not Healthy

Ben and his partner Marc Andreessen. They have started and built multiple successful businesses and all I do is write checks...... I have never, not once, been successful with an investment in a company that raised a boatload of money before it found traction and product market fit with its primary product.....The very best investments that I have been involved in established product market fit before raising a lot of money. That's how Geocities did it. That's how Twitter did it. That's how Zynga did it..... they had significant user or customer adoption before ramping up hiring and spend..... it is very hard to be nimble and quick when you have hundreds (or even dozens) of engineers and other employees....Ben explains that Loudcloud raised $350mm in four rounds of financing (including an IPO) in the first 15 months of its life. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz can do that. Most of you can not.

Albert Wegner: The Sui Generis Startup

There are extremely few people in the world that can raise money for super high burn businesses on the strength of their vision and reputation.

Ben Horowitz: The Revenge Of The Fat Guy

Fred is one of my favorite VCs .... Product market fit isn’t a one-time, discrete point in time that announces itself with trumpet fanfares....Some companies achieve primary product market fit in one big bang. Most don’t, instead getting there through partial fits, a few false alarms, and a big dollop of perseverance..... I show below that Fred himself didn’t realize that Loudcloud had achieved product market fit even though we had...... We had to rebuild completely and would ultimately find product market fit in a different set of markets altogether....... the best markets are usually the ones in which competition is fierce because the opportunity is big...... Twitter (one of Fred’s brilliant investments) ..... Twitter is more exceptional than Loudcloud or Opsware..... Marc had moved on to found Ning and I was the CEO who nearly ran Loudcloud into the wall.

The real answer to this debate is there is no one size fits all. Fat or thin is right depending on what business cycle the economy is going through, depends on what stage the startup is in, depends on what the eventual size of its market and the startup's share of that market ends up being. There can only be so many Googles, and so many Facebooks. Most startups end up being neither and still succeeding. You can absolutely make the case for fat, but overall it is the lean startup that wins. Fat is few and far between. Some of the fat ones might be some of the biggest winners, but they will still be a numerical minority, a super minority. So if it is about betting, I'd bet on lean. Especially for early stage, definitely go lean. But a startup can start lean and go fat later. There is no one formula.

Loudcloud/Opsware is clearly a fat success story, but that does not make it the norm. The number of lean success stories far outnumber the fat success stories.

Ben and Fred come across as two large size figures in the tech industry who both have much respect for each other. That makes this debate extra interesting. There is this with-all-due-respect deference from both sides. You could argue this whole debate was masterminded by two heavyweights to pay compliments to each other.

Both are right. There is no one formula. The disagreement is in nuances. Ben has done fat well. Fred has done lean well, and many, many times. Can't argue with track records of success. Or maybe you can. Hence the blog posts and counter blog posts.

Ben saying "Twitter is more exceptional than Loudcloud or Opsware" had me chuckling. The statement is so very true.

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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 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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