Archive | September, 2008

The branded filter

by evbart on September 23, 2008 in Uncategorized

I had a conversation the other day with John Vitti from Artificial Flavor, about the role that taste and brand play in the tech world.  As a guy coming to the tech scene from fashion he made some key points about tech companies not understanding brand, reputation, and taste when launching their platforms (as much as they should).

The key example was with mobile marketing firms.  When you sign up to receive messages on your phone, you’re opting for a very personal form of contact, and you want that contact to reflect your lifestyle.  An online service soley offering discounted cheap items may not be the type of intrusion you want in your hip, urban, never-stop-running lifestyle tearing around NYC. or SF :-)

Obviously Apple came up in the conversation, and so did Daily Candy and Thrillist.  How can Daily Candy command such high advertising prices for what essentially boils down to a mailing list?  Well, its not just any mailing list, its the unofficial “Sex in the City” mailing list.  Every uptown girl manhattanite, both wannabes and insiders subscribe to this list because they have/want good taste, and Daily Candy knows what their customers want.  

On the flipside, for the boys, Thrillist is a marketing list with an attitude, that I’ve stayed subscribed to for the last 2 or 3 years.  Why?  Well, at least once a week they send me something that I would have found intersting had a seen it in a magazine or blog.  They have a higher rate of sending me “cool” new restaurants than when I browse for restaurants on Yelp, or products when I’m looking on Amazon.

Are these sites doing better than comparable web2.0 recommendation sites?  Does Urban Daddy, and exclusive invite version of Thrillist take it up a notch?  These all seem to command a premium.

That filter, having the magic ability to send me things that I like is what I want more of and what people seeming willing to pay for.  These examples focus products/restaurants/etc, and clearly every demographic has its own flavors, but where can I sign up for someone to provide this same filter for other things?

TechCrunch, Venturebeat, Mashable all cover a lot of the same information.  Why can’t someone filter through that and just find me the good stuff?

My buddy in Spain keeps up with world events through Stratfor, an in-depth premium geopolitical intelligence review.  Its priced at over 30$ per month?  Seems like this focus is bringing real revenue.  

Something many a startup could learn from.

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Tumblr and Posterous side by side

by evbart on September 23, 2008 in web apps

When I saw posterous pitch at the Y combinator demo day, I signed up for an account right away and started doing a lot more mobile blogging.

Then after a few days, I thought to myself “isn’t this a lot like that tumblr thing all my tech friends are using?”

So I talked to them about the differences, and the general response was that Tumblr was more social, so I setup an account on Tumblr as well.

Then because I was too lazy to thouroughly test out both platforms, I just decided I’d send my blog post via email to both services, so I could get comfortable actively using both platform and seeing the results.  The posterous account seemed like a great place to point my non-nerdy non-techy friends, and tumblr would be a place where I could keep up on the tech discussions, since thats where the tech audience already set up camp.

 

Here they are running side (posterous) by side (tumblr)

Posterous:

Tumblr:

 

As you can see, they look nothing alike. It turned out there was some major differences.  Here they are:

1) Tumblr is more social. All my nerdy friends are already using it, so the dashboard of tumblr blogs i follow is already full of interesting content, and conversations for me to add to.

2) Posterous handles full content posts with an image as well as multiple images.  Tumblr doesn’t do this all that well.

3) Posterous really works without ever really having to go to visit the site.  Tumblr tends to be more useful when you go visit the site and use it.

 

Nice fun comparison. I probably wouldn’t use Tumblr to communicate with my non tech friends.  Now that the comparison experiment’s over I just post whatever I want to each!

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Angel networks getting a bad rap

by evbart on September 19, 2008 in angel investing, VC

I’ve been out in the bay area now for a little over a month, and I’m seeing an interesting trend in how angel networks are perceived.  Some VCs that I talk to are very interested in working with angels, and see the value of Angelsoft as having aggregated all these different angel investors into one place, making it easier for VCs to engage them.

This is a great positive attitude, and I think the VCs could benefit a lot from angels.  Angels definitely have some advantages over VCs, that shouldn’t be down played.  Ron Conway points some of them out here, and Roger Erhenberg has been talking about how “Super Angels” are going to dominate for a while.

The flip side of this argument, and one I’m hearing just as often, is that angel networks are a waste of time and tough to deal with.  I didn’t understand where this sentiment was coming from until I had a more in-depth conversation with Jeff @ Softtech VC.

His criticism was one more directed towards the time spent raising capital.  He hates that startups have to spend time raising money, and he feels that non-specialized angel networks can take too much time.

For a web2.0 company to go pitch to 80 investors with varying interests along side a biotech company and a retail company, that startup may not get the attention they deserve.  Even if they do, it make take much longer for a group of people to organize and decide to invest, than it would with an individual angel.

This concept also adds to the case for super angels being the best route.  Investors that are quick, can do deals anywhere, and are well connected across the startup community.  I think it also makes a great case for sector focused angel networks.

In the end, since this angel network = slow and inefficient concept seems to be pretty wide spread, I think its a great thing for the networks to be aware of.  Yes, we’re talking generalizations, and we all know there are some really great networks out there, but if the Venture community is going to become more efficient as a whole, all the parts need to work better together.

Its really all about reputation.  Investors are starting to realize that from the entrepreneurs perspective through sites like the funded, but its more than that.  You also have a reputation to maintain amongst investors.  Realize that if you’re not sector specific, that you need to find someone who is, so you can provide value to the entrepreneur.  Be even more aware of how long you take to get back to those entrepreneurs, because this is a big deal to them, and if they have VCs backing them (as angels), you need to take care to protect your reputation with investors too!

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We are all publishers, where IS my personal publishing tool?

by evbart on September 11, 2008 in Uncategorized

(warning, im at TechCrunch50, quick rant thats been boiling since the ycombinator pitches)

Yes, we are all generating user generated content.  We all go to the following sites to publish our ideas:

- flickr
- facebook
- yelp
- good reads
- upcoming
- twitter
- posterous
- tumblr

The point being, there’s a ton of sites or tools, and Im sick of going to all these different sites to write something.  I publish, I write, I post pics, I publish videos.  The key word here being “I” or me.  I want one place to do all of these.

Using posterous and tumblr really started giving me the idea/desire.  I can use my email to publish to both of these as well as to flickr and facebook from my blackberry.  Thats convenient.  Thats the way I want to post content, and I never want to have to go to a site again.

Now, please let me do it for book reviews, restaurant reviews, movie reviews, locations …..  I get the vibe that Posterous is trying to start this, but I want it to go further.

When I do a posterous post, I want to tag it as a restaurant review, and then I want to be able to view those on a map, and I want it to go to yelp.  You could pass the data via RSS, and then I could subscribe to my friends blogs and grab their restaurant reivews.

When I write about a book on posterous, I want to be able to tag that as a book review rather than having to go repost it to  goodreads.

Lets take back the power from all these different publishing platforms.  We’re already working for them for free by contributing our work, do we really have to be subjected to their bad UI design, advertisements, or even being forced to go to a computer and use a browser?

 

 

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