Monday, January 30, 2006
More adventurous venture ideas
Thatedguy:
I envision the Ebay/Craigslist of VC. A bulletin board where the the owners of the venture can post their venture with the investment opportunity and offers. Where the users can browse and can invest at will. Somewhere where a white collar joe schmoe like myself could go and invest $1000 in the next digg. The risk would be great for me, but there would be a lot of smaller ventures that would receive funding because their wasn’t a VC firm inbetween filtering what was worthy of investment. Sure they are the experts, but even experts mess up once in a while.
Shel Israel reminds us of what he wrote way back.
My working theory is that a Capital firm with Esther Dyson, Mark Evans, Shel Israel, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, or some combination, might have value that, along side my money, could bring ideas into the mainstream in a much different fashion with great returns for all.
I am gleefully presenting Rick Segal with a better title for the thread he has been pushing at recently, where the economics of Web 2.0-ish companies is eroding the traditional value that VCs bring to the innovation game: New Venture Economics.
I'll try and look at the industry sidelong in the next few days to see if there are some different trends that can be answered, capitalized on, etc.
Me too.
Questions about DRM at the hardware level
Over in Linux Journal: Where is Linux on Intel's desktop and laptop roadmap? Answers to questions there might help me wrap a long piece I'm doing for LJ on CES, Macworld and news that has followed both.
Witness to the recreation
Doc, I'm pretty sure some women in the communication biz who are clued have said some smart things over the past five years too. Maybe not. Of course, in reflecting about Edelman's having Gotten Religion, you would mention you three and jerry and steve and dave and peter and richard and scoble and rick and rob and mathew and michael--toss in JESUS and the rest of the 12 apostles if you want to. Glad to see Esther there too. Some other women were preaching this stuff INSIDE big PR agencies -- and writing it online -- before some of these guys had even read the Good Word of Cluetrain. I'm just saying.
Point taken. Jeneane wrote Bye Bye Big PR in 2003, by the way. And was more than clue'd way before that.
Up over
As you might guess, if you've seen some of my shots from airplane windows, I like getting as close to Space as possible.
Which is why the whole idea of civilian space travel is one that turns me on. A lot.
So it's been fun talking to my old pal David Beaver, a magician and inventor who has been busy helping launch the World Space Center in Raleigh, as its Creative Director.
The site offers many ways to get involved.
As I told David on the phone last week, I highly recommend getting a blog going around this thing. They have a bunch of other bases covered already. A new magazine. Connections to projects. But a blog would start rolling a snowball in a sphere where momentum and mass accumulation can happen fast.
I've offered to help. Maybe some of the rest of ya'll can too. Including folks more geographically proximal than I am.
Hearing an a 80-year-old bubble go pop
I was at walmart looking for something else, when I found Bubble. I have been following Mark Cubans blog and his discussions about changing the Movie Business. In 5 years when the new histories of Movies are written, Bubble will be the movie that signaled a change in the way people watch and buy movies. The Idea of being able to pick up a copy on your way out of the theatre, is in itself reveloutionary. Mark Cuban has presented a completely different model for movies.
As for the goods, he adds,
Bubble is a low budget film whose story could be subtitled, 'Weird Shit happens in Small Towns.' It is a short film at 73 minutes, and will not appeal to folks just looking for a good time. But for folks who love movies, folks who have a taste for the edge of filmaking, and like Steven Soderberg's work, this is a great way to spend some time
Please submit as Exhibit A...
One of the most annoying traits of a certain kind of A-list blogger is the habit of saying something that sounds deep and mysterious, or not saying anything at all, but leaving it to the reader to read the Clues and solve the "puzzle" of what your point is. Usually this is a teaser to a subsequent blog post where all is revealed.
Lest I be accused of being obtuse myself, I'll name names: Dave Winer, Doc Searls, and today Om Malik are the worst culprits I can think of. Om makes the outlandish statement that the current "boom" is half over, which is attributable in his mind to a "WHY OF THIS BOOM" which he asks readers to comb through two long, boring articles to decipher.
Let me make this perfectly clear. If you don't support your statements on your blog with easily comprehensible supporting facts and evidence, you're telling your audience that you don't know what you're talking about. The inference in readers' minds is that you don't have the ability to form a coherent, plain argument, so you have to hide behind obfuscation, subterfuge and weasel words. I have not seen a single instance where the idea unveiled by the author has not been a letdown compared to the hype preceding it.
The vast majority of ideas are worth nothing. If your idea's that good, it doesn't need tarting up. Just say what you mean and let your words be judged on merit.
Okay, Paul. You called out three bloggers, and submitted "supporting facts" in your case against one. Evidence is still out in your cases against the other two.
Reflections
My latest photoset is from sunset last night — just several hours ago, as I write this. Placement of interesting cirrus clouds to the Southeast favored reflections off the pool and the Pacific in that direction.
Bonus reflections from Chip Hoagland.
Also from Shelley Powers, who does amazing things with a Nikon D70 (which I rented once and couldn't figure out).
Observations
Watch Augustine blow its top. Thanks to Ron for the pointer.
Saving graces
Sheila Lennon: Every once in a while in life, if you're lucky, you get to be part of something unambiguously good.
From the land of Thresholdia
David Berlind: Mashup ecosysem poised to explode. Amazing and right on-explanations of What's Going On. That desire to scratch an itch is where innovation begins and now, there's no paperwork to fill out, phone calls to make, or slotting of priorities to do in order to get itches scratched. Wanna add an API to the Internet? Go right head. Start innovating.
Which she is
the companies that "win" with me, win because they RESPECT me and I can tell that they respect me in lots of little and big ways - service, pricing, product design. They don't take me for granted. Sounds like a real relationship, ey - and it takes work. But hey, I am worth it..;)
More in my comments to the post.
From the Value Subtraction frontier...
John Palfrey: Want to see what Google is blocking in China? Coming soon to the OpenNet Initiative. I suspect we'll see it soon here.
I was overheard to have said...
Eric Schwartzman, reporting an offline conversation:
I don't remember his exact words, but what Doc basically said was this:
Ink is not permanent. I just threw out a stack of magazines this morning. On the other hand, bits on the web are usually up a lot longer. Print turns into fish wrap. Bits don't.
Of course, some bits do disappear. But an irony of our volatile environment is that information here tends to outlast the relatively less volatile stuff we call "print". Or at least the periodical stuff.
Except for old National Geographics, of course. But then, nobody reads those, either.