May 14, 2013
An EIR on Campus

Last weekend, I went back to Wesleyan, my alma mater, to talk to undergrads interested in startups about internships in New York this summer. These meetings were part of a new initiative from Digital Wesleyan, a group represented by Jim Friedlich, Jake Levine and myself, to fund 10-week internships for Wes undergrads at startups. We’ve noticed a supply-demand paradox that would benefit from an entity funding, matching, and placing students at companies. Interns are smart and eager but not all can afford to work for free; startups are in constant need of body and mind power but few have cash to spare even for 10 weeks of genius. So, if we can find a way to cover the cost of living for a few interns and place them well, everyone stands to benefit, short and long term.

We’ve been thrilled by the response from students and companies alike and hope that the program blossoms in coming years. Yet, there’s another, more systemic reason we felt compelled to seek funding for nyc-based internships: our campus didn’t know about startups.

 As two graduates who happened into entrepreneurship and are now immersed, Jake and I experienced the lack graduating startup knowledge first-hand and continue to see it in current undergrads from many schools. Graduates are not presented startup as a career-path of record or opportunity. Traditional industries still pull the best and brightest because they’re known. Career Resources Centers at schools have specialized employees for these fields: law advisors, finance advisors, science advisors, healthcare advisors, and non-profit advisors. Whither the startup advisor?

Enter: The University Entrepreneur in Residence who would give presence to startups and be an expert in industry trends, alumni introductions and strategy for working as an entrepreneur. In amplifying the liberal arts mission – to have an impact, to go out and change the world – schools need to show their students the field of entrepreneurship, where immediate, essential impact trumps all others. Students want it and the schools want them to want it, so brand it and promote it through an EIR. Opening the gates to a larger and younger talent pool with more awareness does nothing to dilute the startup mystique or lessen the profound passion required to succeed. If anything, this role would touch toe to water for students who I’d bet can already swim, the plunge is up to their vision, intellect, and ambition. 

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May 8, 2013
Backwards TVs, Harmonized Commutes

My roommates and I are reorganizing some stuff in our apartment as some people are moving out. While we moved our TV yesterday, the mass of cords and boxes required to make it all work struck me as absurd. 

Here’s a picture: 

image

That’s the pre-req for watching Game of Thrones and maybe checking email at home. 

Here’s what it takes to do the same at Konditori, our local coffee shop just around the corner: 

Konditori likely has a router but the point is clear - there’s no technology more antiquated than the TV screen and cable provider as the output and conduit for internet media and televised consumption. As if a 21st century Frankenstein looms large in our living rooms and offices, the TV cannot come alive without foreign modems and chargers plugged-in. 

Might we soon approach a watershed moment for the TV? Its strange to think the flatscreen - so new and shiny a few years ago - is behind the times. It is because standing alone the set carries a fraction of the value of its in-store price point. Apple TV and Boxee offer a better experience than most providers, but they’re still boxes. Lasting innovation should come through the set itself. Custom add-ons should exist as a choice for those that are particular not a necessity for the mainstream. Crazy that it hasn’t happened yet.

While TV strikes a tangled pose of closed system struggling to consolidate, a related breakthrough begins to emerge. On the morning journey from Konditori to my office this week, a crackle of noise came through my headphones between stops on the F Train. Like a CD skipping or a distant radio station, my Songza playlist pushed through the silent subway ride, every 3 or 4 seconds a beat hitting my earbuds.  Could it be? Streaming music and so internet on the subway?

 Wifi is made available at stations every other week it seems but the first hook to reach from my phone to my ears on a moving train was beautiful (Full Disclosure it was Action Bronson - Not Enough Words). Innovation imbues the NY subway and music is the spark. Some comment that internet on the subway will further eliminate human-to-human interaction in public spaces, but when was the last time you struck up a conversation with someone you didn’t know on the train? More access means more connecting with the people you want to, less time warner and superfluous boxes in our apartment, and more music all the time, which is always a good thing.  

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February 19, 2013

Today I gave a class about bitly data at Social Media Week called ‘What’s in a Click?’ 

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February 5, 2013
Un-Cramping The Kitchen

When you say two heads are better than one and collaboration is key, you   scratch the surface of why a team can be more adept than a single person at hashing out an idea and executing a project. 

But when too many of those key collaborators evolve into cooks in a cramped and musty kitchen, brainstorming becomes a tooth and nail death match for which ingredients in which proportions should be added when. The proverbial cramped cooks converse: 

Cook 1: Two hard boiled eggs 10 seconds after the water’s boiling

Cook 2: its time for the sardines I wrapped them in prosciutto, bacon, and seaweed

Cook 3: I thought we all agreed red velvet cake batter was going to be our secret ingredient? I’m adding it! 

Sounds crazy and disgusting. Even worse imagine a less crowded kitchen that affords each cook space to concoct to their own frankensteinian delight yet still required to combine their offering with their fellow chefs’ - one big, sloppy meal with myriad input and guttural results. 

At a time like the above, someone has to stand back and say: What the hell are we cooking and why? 

Define the core reason for a team and a project to exist. What is your purpose? 

Without defined purpose our three cooks serve up stomach aches and gags for dinner; with it they craft a three-course meal to delight the most sophisticated palette. 

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November 13, 2012
handmade in nyc

handmade in nyc

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August 27, 2012
technicolor dream quilt

On Friday, I had coffee with a guy who’s interested in a sales position at bitly. We talked for awhile mostly about what bitly was and what it meant to the web. Just before he left, David pulled this picture up on an ipad and said he hoped bitly became something similar. It stuck with me and I started thinking how often people ask what bitly will end up being…

…a profitable SaaS? An outmoded geeky utility? the next pinterest? omniture 2.0? I’d prefer to think that each of those short links and corresponding clicks have created a company that’s more adjective than noun. Bitly is: 

Representative - of people’s perceived and actual selves online. Hegel would be proud that   in 2012 a URL shorten has grown to toe the line of his identity in difference. The shorten telling of how people present themselves to the world; the click detailing what people are actually into and, in a way, who they really are. Matt LeMay - Our in-house Hegel - would call this the Kitteh vs. Chikin syndrome.

Descriptive - of interest online. Products, Articles, Presidents, News Outlets, Pop Singers, and Kardashians. What’s popular and what isn’t right now? From academia to advertising, this question begs an answer for web consumption. With bitly, an in-depth, filtered view of topic popularity or a general report on top worldwide publishers is actually possible. 

So why the painting? two years in the making, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - 1884 is Seurat’s most famous work as it established pointillism as art form. The 6 x 10 foot canvas is made up of tiny individual points of highly curated color - unique as snowflakes - but, when seen as a whole, expressing a unified hue to any viewer. Iconic, gorgeous, and utterly dependent on each point for the consumate effect. 

I’ve come to learn that a URL shortener by itself is simple to build and that any one click isn’t meaningful to anyone beyond the clicker. But at scale with real-time metrics and almost four years in the making, Weissman, Levy, Cohen, Mason, Borthwick, Czebotar, Kortina, Tomlinson and Ridgeway’s famous link shortener has taken every individual click - point of data - and quilted an image potentially as vivid as Sunday Afternoon….

Title: The Web, Artist: Bitly, Date: 2008-present, Description: an expansive work that defines who we are through its own creation and growth. 

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July 25, 2012
Let’s Talk Whenever

At bitly, we’ve always stressed a Let’s Talk Whenever policy with everyone. We also have weekly meetings to talk about the past five days, ideas, issues, and anything inbetween. These one-on-ones are so crucial because everyone can talk freely.

When else do you catch up with colleagues? When you update each other on the progress of a particular project or meeting…or during the hey, good morning exchange that happens when people arrive.  By removing such formality, our weekly sit-downs sometimes become the most engaging, honest, and productive conversations of the week. Our business has grown as much in part to these weekly meetings as well as random coffees, or stairwell conversations as anything else over the past two years.

Transparency: next to trust, people call it the most important item in any relationship, co-working included. At work, its easy to get sucked into the silent vortex of desk, computer, and headphones. Eight hours later you might not have actually talked to anyone. Even in opening your mouth, if you’re only conversing within a structure of your immediate responsibilities, you can lose opinion and emotion; stepping outside of the pace and expectation of day-to-day can become rare. 

You create transparency through conversation because you know how others feel and everyone knows what’s going on. Its impossible and inappropriate to do all the time as you grow but essential to maintain in any culture you’ve created. 

So let’s talk whenever…but in person…cause talking on the phone sucks and my thumbs are too awkward to text. 

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June 25, 2012
Earn It, Experience Not Required

                                                                                  

One of the most common reasons I’ve heard from anyone, regardless of age, who’s interested in moving to a startup from a different field is a desire to ‘have an impact’. This could be taken as a generic, well-worn answer to the vague question: why startup instead of ‘x’ profession?  Maybe sometimes it is, but I believe that this answer is a packed statement that reflects how entrepreneurship and the rising popularity of working at early stage companies has exposed an outmoded form of traditional career path. 

Did this broken or at least boring dynamic begin with the American profession? Absolutely not. In fact, impact wasn’t really available to anyone save inherited royals dating back through most of human existence. Kings and Queens took thrones when they’re parents died or were killed. Without any qualification, this often transpired with catastrophic results. One of the greatest war time kings in British history, Henry V who, for the briefest time held France and England under one crown, had that dominion lost by a son who was too feeble and honestly way too young to deal (like infant young). 

How insane is it to pass things down this way? Influence, power, and control remained amongst a tiny, paranoid minority and entrepreneur was an adjective not a noun or profession. Just crazy. It was, perhaps, the greatest revolutionary achievement from America’s Founding Fathers to extract power from the hands of families passed down and reward democratic choice, present achievement and popularity with leadership. The United States would never have arrived at President Barack Obama if this had not been done and we would never have become a progressive, global power without it either. 

What’s happened then? Well, in my mind, the 20th century professional world has grown to reflect that of political ruling classes from centuries past. CEOs aren’t giving the reigns to their children but career ascension is a reward for years served. speckled white hair means someone’s ready for a corner office. We’re taught to earn gradually over time not through overtime. This sounds like prison, not progress, unfortunately its reality. Pursue the careers that seemed so logical and safe post WWII in the U.S. and surrender certain drive, creativity, and personal vision to 20-30 years of repetitive experience. And then maybe join the board. The sickening fact is that these ‘safe’ professions aren’t even safe anymore. One too many WSJ reports on advanced degree graduates who aren’t finding work are testament to this insanity. And just to be clear, am I arguing that everyone should always be in a startup throughout their career? No, startups are by nature transient, not an endgoal. Do we still need advanced degrees? Absolutely…Is an MBA worthwhile in startupland? Sometimes, yes…Is there still a place for a gradual career focused on masterful decades of dedication? no doubt…but…

…you say want to have an impact? like tomorrow?  Startups have no age limit, height requirement, or a record of years in an industry to have a massive impact. The wise are not exclusively the elderly, youth is not wasted. Anyone can do anything at anytime. Should everyone? No. Can anyone? Oh yes, and please do. Impact - direct, meaningful, rewarding - exists in startup, in fact its the essence of why many of the most successful companies of the past 20 years were started. People had passionate desire to have an impact, to change the world and they did. 

So, the next time you hear this from a interviewee, don’t pass it off as boilerplate. Accept it as a reflection on other industries’ status quo and applaud the person across from you for not wanting to spend a lifetime waiting to inherit a right to impact that should have been encouraged from day one. 

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May 22, 2012
Surviving Web to Mobile

A few days ago, Fred Wilson wrote a post discussing native mobile apps that wouldn’t exist without mobile as a platform. This got me thinking about which web first services are building effective mobile apps that will keep them user-relevant as mobile becomes the dominant platform for online consumption? 

The mobile concern is obvious all the way up to Facebook, which has seen web-based traffic lost to mobile, along with complaints about UI and speed from mobile users. Instagram may be a model and well-timed crutch for Facebook as its mobile presence adapts. What becomes apparent though is that many of today’s most beloved services face a significant challenge in maintaining their popularity on a smaller screen with fewer opportunities to retain user attention. 

HBOGO from HBO and Seamless come to mind as services that have crossed into the mobile space with few hiccups and are delivering an experience akin to the quality of their websites and, in HBO’s case, TV channels. Seamless is more efficient on mobile because I can order dinner, tip the delivery guy, and process payment while I’m walking home. HBOGO brings the network’s dynamic programing to all my mobile devices with no drop off in picture quality, episode updates, or increase in pricing. I’m fairly certain both of these services would thrive in a world where only their mobile apps existed. 

I wonder which others will thrive and which ones won’t? 

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April 19, 2012
"New York, it was an adult portion. It was an adult dose. So it took a couple of trips to get into it. You just go in the first time and you get your ass kicked and you take off. As soon as it heals up, you come back and you try it again. Eventually, you fall right in love with it."

— Levon Helm, The Last Waltz, RIP 

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(Notes: 10)
  
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