FourSquare Office, Dropio Technology

FourSquare

So I checked into the FourSquare office near Cooper Union at precisely 4:16 PM. I walked in and there was no receptionist just three rows of people, mostly guys, staring at their screens. I caught a glimpse of Naveen (@naveen) from a distance. The guy I had met in the elevator walked over to me and said I needed to email Evan, and that he was out for a few days. He was the one who handled job applications.

4:16 PM @ FourSquare

I emailed Evan once I got back, but one very likely scenario: I never hear from FourSquare. They are hot, they must be getting a firehose of resumes daily. They might not even actively be looking. Oh, well. But I will give it a few days before I come to that conclusion.

I am suggesting thinking of the behavior of a large number of people approaches science and has to be given the same respect as coding. They might not bite. I carried on that same meme to my conversation with the MeetUp CTO Greg a few hours later. MeetUp has a great team of techies as it should, but it does not officially have a team of sociologists, and psychologists and group dynamics specialists in house. I have always wondered why. I have seen that as a gap to be filled.







Dropio

The NYC Tech Talks MeetUp was at the MeetUp headquarters. I showed up a little early. It was scheduled to start at 7 PM. Sam Lessin, the founder of Dropio, and his team member number two, Jacob, both took turns talking. (It is entirely possible Jacob is not on Twitter.)

That thing between Twitter and Blogger is Tumblr. Similarly the NYC Tech Talks MeetUp meets a need that the much larger, much more general NY Tech MeetUp does not. I really appreciated the lack of bar background noise after the talk was over. You could actually hold conversations, and talk to people in normal tones of voice. The MeetUp has been put together by the MeetUp CTO Greg. (@gwhalin)

Sam (@lessin) and Jacob did not have five minutes. They must have talked for over an hour. They used a whiteboard. That made it more intimate than a PowerPoint presentation. They answered a ton of questions. I asked Sam a question, "So you build the architecture, and scale it out, then what do you do next? What do your product teams spend most of their time on these days?" Analytics, he said.

Later one on one I asked Jacob about this Digital Dumbo event on Thursday at the Dropio headquarters. He said it was like a cocktail party for those who worked in Dumbo. Then, I said, I'd not be interested, I thought it was a more general tech event.

4:16 PM @ FourSquare

Not Union Square Ventures

I am in a job mood and I have decided to show up at the FourSquare office later today. 4:16 PM sounds like a good time to show up.

FourSquare HQ
36 Cooper Sq
at E 6th St
New York, NY 10003

• Marketing Director
• Business Development Director
• Jobs: Everything Else .... Dying to join foursquare and a rock star in an area not listed above? Send your resume to jobs@foursquare.com anyways with a note on how you can help!

I am not a developer/coder although I think you should check out my LinkedIn page to see all the languages I have picked up along the way, only two of which I was ever formally taught. Some of my strengths I have talked about here: Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying. Fred Wilson thinks I am "overqualified" for Union Square Ventures, or at least for the two open positions, so I must be just right for FourSquare, I figured, the hottest tech company in town.

I Have Been Quoted In Fast Company
2010: Location, Random Connections, The Inbox, Frictionless Payments
Selling FourSquare Would Be A Mistake, Partnering Would Be Genius
Dennis, Fred, Scott: Tweet Boom Tweet Boom
4/16: I Found Myself A Party: Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night
If The Tweet Is The Atom, What Is Location?
The iPhone, Nexus One, Or Droid?
Silicon Valley Vs. New York City
The Foursquare Rap: Badges Like Us
Location! Location! Location!
Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever
Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown
Dennis Crowley: I Underestimated Him

What can I do for FourSquare?

• I see FourSquare going IPO, (Selling FourSquare Would Be A Mistake, Partnering Would Be Genius) and I see the intermediate steps. I see FourSquare in the big scheme of things: Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter.
• I am outstanding when it comes to group dynamics. 
• I am not a coder, but I could pick up some of the language fast, enough to be able to deal with coders. Teams of coders need big picture people like me. 
• I would be good at tactics, strategies, negotiations, deals.  FourSquare needs this more than most things right now to grow to new heights. 
• I have a thing for digital fights. "I believe in being nice, but that does not apply to my enemies." Larry Ellison. Sometimes you need that, like when Yelp decided to copy FourSquare. I liked how Dennis came swinging back. 
• Reference: Fred Wilson. 

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I Have Been Quoted In Fast Company

This morning I had a DM - direct message - on Twitter from Shane Snow. (bio)(@shanesnow): Hey great meeting you the other day. Did you see your quote in the fastcompany story last weekend? Anyway, stay in touch!

I remembered this guy vividly from Fred Wilson's blog yesterday, but we have met? I shot him a DM: We met? I am quoted? Where? Send me the link. Thanks.

Fred Wilson: A DJ

Then I am thinking to myself, wait a minute. Is this the same guy I talked to at the FourSquare party?

4/16: I Found Myself A Party: Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night

I went to the Fast Company website and did a search on FourSquare.

Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Inside the Check-In Wars | Fast Company
Foursquare Steps Up its Location-Based Content With Zagat, HBO
Foursquare Adds Another Big Partner: Conde Nast's Lucky Magazine
Playing Foursquare: A Mobile Social Game That Makes Friend-Finding...
Foursquare Offers Analytics to Businesses, Enables Easy Customer...
Gowalla + Foursquare + Brightkite + Yelp + Google Maps=Checkin...
From Addiction to Apathy: The Five Stages of Foursquare Use | Fast...
Twitter Gut Checks Foursquare With "Points of Interest," Adds...
Foursquare Goes Mainstream, Teams With Bravo TV | Fast Company
Foursquare's Digital Graffiti, a Legally Nerve-Wracking Taste of...
Checking in at Foursquare's Hot Tubbin', Rooftop, Rock Star Moment...
Foursquare Makes Geotagging Generous, Points to Charity's AR...
Foursquare's Celebrity Mode Allows You to Avoid DJ Pauly D Like an...
Wall Street Journal an Foursquare: Geolocating City Newsrag...
Is Foursquare Poised to Rule Local Advertising? | Fast Company
foursquare| Fast Company
Foursquare Vows to Stop Those Cheating "Armchair Mayors" | Fast...
How Foursquare Can Steal Local from Twitter | Fast Company
Tweetsii Taps Twitter Locations, Mashes-Up Gowalla and Foursquar...

Kevin Rose was at the same party? If I had known I'd have stayed on longer and I'd have made a point to say hello to the guy.

Checking in at Foursquare's Hot Tubbin', Rooftop, Rock Star Moment...

"Paramendra Bhagat, an entrepreneur and Foursquare user at tonight's party says he started using Foursquare in February, when user activity started picking up dramatically. "When people say Foursquare is the next Twitter, I believe it," he says."

Not Union Square Ventures

Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying

2010: Location, Random Connections, The Inbox, Frictionless Payments

I am not suggesting all four spaces carry equal weight; they don't. Location carries more weight than all the rest put together. 2010 is location's year. By now that is conventional wisdom. I can see why, and I buy into it. But these strike me as spaces to watch for this year. One of the other three might claim 2011 as their year. And I am open to adding other spaces to the list if I can find them, read up on them, imagine them. This list of four is by far not exhaustive. Charlie (@ceonyc) had a blog post a few weeks back (my comment) that ranked high on my vision grid, and he talked about some spaces he would like to see action in as an early stage investor. And he does not even touch upon these four spaces. So what you are looking for impacts what you see. There's plenty of exciting stuff happening in many directions. The 2010s will be what the 1990s should have been but weren't. We will dream big again, only this time there will be less fluff. Real businesses will get built. Old industries will get reinvented. New industries will see light of day. These are exciting times.

(1) Location

I'd be rooting for FourSquare even if it were half the size of Gowalla, but it makes it easier to root for because it is crushing the competition. But like the Google and Amazon people will tell you, don't spend too much time looking in the rear view mirror. Focus on customer feedback more. Grow.

Selling FourSquare Would Be A Mistake, Partnering Would Be Genius

The mobile web is bigger and is growing faster than the old web. Location is key to the mobile web. FourSquare has itself a sweet, sweet spot. All the best to Dennis (@dens) and Naveen. (@naveen)

(2) Random Connections

Chatroulette Is For Real

We could have had Mark Zuckerberg, but instead we lost him to the Valley. We should try better with Andrey. We want people all over the world to be able to meet random New Yorkers. There's the fun in sharing.

(3) The Inbox

ReadWriteWeb: Gmail Becomes an App Platform: Google Adds OAuth to IMAP ....Syphir, which lets you apply all kinds of complex rules to your incoming mail and then lets you get iPhone push notification for your smartly filtered mail.
Rapportive - an incredible GMail contacts plug-in.
Your Inbox as Platform: Google Calendar More Closely Integrated With Gmail

Everything is email, if you think about it. When I first started blogging, I was like, great, I no longer need to flood people's inboxes. All I have to do is send them a link to a blog post. Facebook is email. People who don't know you don't email you, and people who email you are only one click away if you want to know the latest in their lives. No need to call them up, or ask them. Twitter is the ultimate email. Eric Schmidt even called it that, but he was a little miserly in the description. A poor man's email? I am poor, everyone is poor by Eric's standards, but hey! FourSquare is email. I am emailing you my location.

Don't give up on email. Email is here to stay. There is so much that can be done with the inbox. I am glad some startups are looking into it.

For now all I want is about four different inboxes. Inbox 1, emails only from individuals whose addresses I have saved. Inbox 2: emails from those people that are going out to more than me. Inbox 3: emails from mailing lists I have subscribed to. Inbox 4: everyone else.

(4) Frictionless Payments

Venmo is my FourSquare in this space. I take hometown pride in Venmo. But then supporting FourSquare and Venmo is like supporting Obama. (Jupiter And Obama) It helped that the guy was outstanding. I get the impression Venmo is also a leader in this crowded space. It was listed in Time magazine as one of the top 50 sites of 2009, along with Drop.io, another hometown goodie. (@lessin)

It is like this, there was barter trade back in the days. Then they had coins, some coins were as big as cart wheels. Then paper money. Then plastic. Then PayPal. We are about to hit the next phase. That is where Venmo comes in.

In my homevillage in Nepal growing up, I saw rice used as currency. Farm workers got paid in rice. Vegetable vendors would give you vegetables for rice. And it was pretty smooth, as in frictionless, enough to give Kortina a run for his money. (@kortina)

What I am telling you, Kortina, is rice as currency is pretty cutting edge, and there was major trust involved.

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Fred Wilson: A DJ

Image of Fred Wilson

Yesterday I called Fred Wilson a DJ. (Fred Wilson: DJ) Today my suspicions have been further confirmed. His blog post today is Nice Analogy. This dude who is the most visible venture capitalist in New York City, and perhaps the most loved VC among all the local entrepreneurs he has never invested in and likely never will since he can only invest in so many per year, this guy is a serious music fanatic.

Shane Snow: Tech StartUps Vs Rock Bands "....I started 3 different bands in college. In each one, we dreamed of making it big, landing a record deal, and having hot Japanese chicks scream our song lyrics at us when we toured Asia.....and having geeky Rails programmers whisper as I pass them in the hall at NerdCon...."
Fred Wilson: Nice Analogy
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The VC And The Music Industry: Not As Different As You Might Imagine
New York Times: Ticketmaster Joins Live Nation, And An Industry Quakes "....bands are making the bulk of their income from concerts....Alliances shift, backs are stabbed and most people have at least three agendas, only one of which they will discuss candidly....“When the Internet came about the artist realized, well hang on, you can’t steal a ticket for a seat, so we started to lean more toward, I don’t really want a record deal, I want to be aligned with somebody who can help me sell tickets. But then I want a company that can use that music and that seat to get ancillary revenues” — from things like food, beverages and sponsorships — “to help me survive.”" ...... “The ticket was underpriced 40 years ago” ...... Azoff was part of the defiant counterculture but was fluent in the language of contracts and comfortable mixing it up in corporate suites. He also had great intuition about how to psychologically size up both foes and friends, and he could sweet-talk and charm as convincingly as he could erupt in rage..... For years, neither promoter nor ticketer has considered fans as the first priority.....

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Farmville Has Not Been Loading For Me

Over a week back I called Steve Jobs a Pied Piper. (The iPad Is No Laptop Killer) My farmville game has not been loading since. Did Steve Jobs get someone to mess with my Flash?

I got started with Farmville in December. I was reading about it a lot. Finally I gave in. Obviously I started the poorest farmer in my neighborhood. Soon I was the richest. I was hooked to the game. I entered the fray out of business curiosity, and I ended up really appreciating some of the social aspects of the game.

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Then not long back a friend of mine who I did not know had more points than me befriended me and now he was the richest farmer in my neighborhood. I was working hard to win back my title, and that is when the Pied Piper episode happened.

I tried the usual remedies like uninstalling and reinstalling Flash. No effect whatsoever.

I am thinking perhaps I attained Farmville nirvana somewhere along the way, and there is nothing more left to do for me at Farmville. That is an explanation I could live with.

In the mean time I have focused my energies on blogging and actively commenting at other people's blogs. That also feels like farming.

Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea

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