Dropio Acquired

Image by jessica vascellaro via CrunchBaseI was just over at Mark Peter Davis' blog for this blog post and learned there Dropio has been acquired - wow - and by Facebook? Congrats, people.

FourSquare Office, Dropio Technology
Digital Dumbo: Here I Come
Venmo And Frictionless Payments
Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever
The Far Future Of Databases At The Dropio Offices
A MeetUp Has Me Excited: Y + 30

How Companies Get Valuated

I don't know a whole lot on the topic. I have a broad idea. I get the concepts. But I have not bothered to master the details. There are too many versions, too many ways they get done. Android is not fragmented, what is really screwed up and fragmented is how companies get valued.

How companies get valuated reminds me of when they taught me several pre-Charles Darwin theories of evolution at high school. They were all over the place. They all lacked the basic beauty of Darwin's theory of evolution.

Dave McClure: Super Angel: Foulmouth

Master Of 500 Hats: July 2010: MoneyBall for Startups: Invest BEFORE Product/Market Fit, Double-Down AFTER.

Super Angels are a recent enough phenomenon that even Paul Graham only very recently wrote about it. There used to be angels and venture capitalists. Super angels have wedged themselves between the two, supposedly wanting to threaten both. Super angels are not your rich uncles, they are not family and friends, they have millions of dollars that they themselves raised, but they are not VCs. They pay way more attention to you than VCs can, they are agile, they have way more money than the traditional angels, and in many cases they are out to make quick money. They are not looking for the next Google, they are looking for the next company Google will buy.

Priority Stream

Image via WikipediaGmail came up with the idea of a Priority Inbox. People have loved it. Finally a cure for the common cold, aka too much email.

Facebook Alternative? Dave McClure Is Full Of It

I am not thinking in terms of a Facebook alternative any more than I am thinking in terms of a Google alterntive, or an alternative to the high end giant Apple. These are stellar companies. Although I do think social is a pendulum swing. Just like social came after search, social is not the final word. There will be a paradigm shift of some sort in a few years. Facebook will also become a giant that no longer occupies the buzz center.

But that is not what Dave McClure is saying. He is talking in terms of an alternative to Facebook itself, another social network that is not Facebook, that is not Twitter. I don't agree, I think Facebook has got the social right, and it keeps innovating the way only having a founder CEO in the driver's seat ensures.

500 Hats: How to Take Down Facebook -- Hint: It Ain't Twitter. (aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network): Facebook has firmly fixed itself into the fundamental fabric of our friends & families

The Microfinance Fishing Net

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”

Microfinance is magic. It is the ultimate fishing net. Poverty is artificial. Microfinance proves that.

Mac App Store: Bullshit

Steve Jobs is this genuinely amazing guy who I have fundamental philosophical differences with. After having replaced the browser with apps on his smartphone he has started to talk in terms of an app store also for the Mac computer. We are going backwards in time, folks, if we keep following the pied piper.