I needed it and it's great to be hanging with my family.
But I missed a dinner last night that I wanted to attend. The dates simply didn't work out.
And that dinner was last night in SF with a group of bloggers that care about consumer products, consumer electronics, personal computing, web services and open source software. Last night Peter told people about his company, Bug Labs which has been in stealth mode for well over a year.
We are investors in the company along with Union Square Ventures and a bunch of super individual investors like our friend Brad Feld.
I wish I was at the dinner. I could talk about Bug Labs all day. And I love seeing other people's creative juices flowing when they first learn about Bug. Dave Winer was there and has two interesting posts here and then a follow up here. Fred has a post as well. I can't wait to see what user will create with Bug. New apps, new services, new communities. Hardware mashups will be possible. But web services is the best and most important part about Bug.
We invested in Buzzwire (formerly 4th Media) about a year ago. At the time, it was an idea and a vision that Andrew, Ed and Dave had.
They have been operating in stealth mode since then quietly building their technology and service.
Today Buzzwire opened up and decided to share their software and plans with everyone. They have a beta version of their service that allows users to stream audio and video on their mobile phone. You can choose any of the content Buzzwire has aggregated or you can upload your own. Low end and high end phones. And it's free.
One of my favorite things they added recently is the ability to share content from your phone to your friends phone via SMS. And the person you share with doesn't have to be a Buzzwire registered user.
We invested in the company for several reasons:
1. Consumers want this stuff and more. 2. It's hard to do right 3. Killer team
We know consumers want video and audio on-demand on their phone. We were investors in thePlatform that provides software infrastructure for Verizon's VCAST service. We saw first hand how much consumers want this type of content. And consumers want more. We want choice and control. We want more than the content that someone else chooses for us.
Buzzwire has developed amazing technology that allows the consumer to stream any audio and video content to mobile devices without requiring any special software in the handset. All other solutions require the consumer to have special, proprietary client software. Or they limit the content by size or type. Buzzwire just works. It knows that type of handset the consumer has, it knows what carrier, it knows which network and it makes the content just work. That is a big deal and no one else is making it this simple. They can reach more consumers because we can work with the most diverse set of handsets on any network.
And best of all, this team is just fantastic. I love working with these guys. They are super passionate about what they are doing. They are seasoned, successful entrepreneurs that know how to build great products and great companies. This was the original team that helped create Mobile 1.0 before 3G and with handsets that were pretty weak.
Buzzwire is currently in beta. The user interface is evolving. I saw the upcoming new version and it's awesome. And while they support the widest range of handsets, Blackberries and a few Verizon phones aren't compatible at this time.
I'm having a ball with the service. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
I was listening to a mix of Arcade Fire tunes on Project Playlist last night.
Winn Butler from the band introduced one particular song and talked about how he first heard it on the radio and just couldn't get enough of it. Fantastic song. I hadn't heard it before.
It turns out the original song is by the Magnetic Fields and is called "Born on a Train". I actually liked the original version better. I agree with Winn though.
The Discovery Channel is celebrating their 20th Anniversary of Shark Week.
And with this anniversary, they have launched two very cool online products
Shark Week Video Mixer: video & audio clips are now available with a web version of an iMovie-like editor. Fans can create their own videos and mix with clips from the show. Putting these tools in the hands of their fans is smart and fun. It's kind of funny that some of my favorite shows (like this one and this one), in addition to the Discovery Channel, are offering video mashup tools w/content.
Discovery also launched this super fun mobile sweepstakes with excellent prizes - all powered by our portfolio company, SendMe. Give it a try and good luck!
Last year I posted the Free Hugs video to my blog. I thought it was great.
Shortly afterwards, I sent Howard an email suggesting a Wallstrip version of Free Hugs. I think my dopey idea at the time was something like VCs and entrepreneurs hugging each other. I don't exactly remember.
Howard, Adam and Lindsay had a much better idea. Here is Free Hugs Wallstrip style.
The east coast vs west coast story about consumer start-up companies has been addressed many times.
But for those of us (entrepreneurs and VCs) living in NYC/Boston - we should continue to ask ourselves this question over and over again.
Scott Kirsner, former writer the Boston Globe, spent a few years in SF and just returned to Boston. His article today revisits this topic. He interviews my partner Todd, my good friend Nabeel and others.
Scott himself makes this observation upon making his return to MA
"Having just boomeranged back to Cambridge after spending two
years in San Francisco, the lack of consumer tech activity here is
startling to me -- it's like going from a noisy, hot, crowded bar to
another across the street where the bartender has plenty of time to
wash glasses and gab with the three regulars perched on stools."
There are plenty of good points in Scott's article but I very much disagree with an entrepreneur named Matt Douglas who says:
"The mentality of East Coast investors is 'Show me revenue first, and then we'll talk again,' " says Douglas.
This couldn't be farther from the case. I know that almost all of our companies (most of them series a) didn't have any revenue when we made the initial investment. And we aren't alone. Union Square Ventures, General Catalyst, Polaris, IDG Ventures, Bessemer, Matrix and others are doing the same. And all of these east coast firms are active locally and yet all of them are investing in the west coast too. Pre-revenue is not a show stopper. They/we are just trying to invest in the very best companies. Regardless of their location.
I lived in SF for 10 years. I've been in Boston since 2001. I've been an entrepreneur most of my career (both coasts) and now I'm an investor. And I believe we do have a cultural problem in the northeast.
Both VCs and entrepreneurs are guilty.
In particular we need to build huge, standalone companies in the northeast. We need more independent, large-scale companies in gaming, consumer web services, consumer products and even consumer electronics.
It's going to happen. I believe that. These days I'm seeing super Boston/NYC entrepreneurs taking on enormous ideas. Some are part of our portfolio and some aren't. And I'm super excited about that.
A bunch of friends have asked me how my experiment is going.
As my friends know, I've been a die hard blackberry user for awhile. We use Microsoft Exchange at the office and blackberry enterprise server. That trio is like gold. It just works.
But I wanted more. Don't we all?
For the past week, I've been using my iPhone exclusively. The Blackberry Curve has been in my desk drawer at the office. And turned off. Cold turkey.
My experience so far:
1. Screen. Unfucking-believable. Gorgeous. I love having (& showing off) photos of my kids. I watch funny N3 and Wallstrip videos when I'm at the airport or when I'm bored. The screen makes all the difference.
2. WiFi. Apple did WiFi right. The range is better than my MacBook Pro. And set up couldn't be easier. WiFi combined with the built in browser is a winner. Love Facebook, nytimes and reading blogs on iphone w/wifi. Browsing on iphone on the ATT Edge network is a loser though. I usually don't do it
3. Keyboard. The keyboard isn't a blackberry. Not even close. And if I'm ever asked to defend my crown, I will absolutely use a blackberry to avoid getting my ass kicked by fred, howard or any other contender. Yet after just one week my iphone typing skills are getting better. Really. Two tips to become an iphone typing jedi
-hit the keys at a 90 degree angle. this is a must.
-don't edit any misspellings until you complete the word. The built in dictionary is quite good and will prompt you in a very intuitive way. Similar experience as Blackberry SureType. Finish the word first. always.
4. Telephone. I like the phone features much better on the iphone than my blackberry. It's easier to hold, dial, mute, redial, hang up, navigate auto-attendent systems, turn ringer on/off etc. Visual voicemail works really well. Pet peeve: phone numbers listed in calendar or email aren't clickable.
5. SMS. The SMS app on iphone is very cool. Some may disagree but I like that SMS are separate than email (unlike the blackberry). I really like how it keeps threaded messages together. It's the ultimate Twitter device.
6. Camera. Very easy to use. Photos are a bit nicer than the Curve. Syncs with iPhoto. Easy to upload to flickr via email. Love that. I also like that photos of my contacts appear in full screen with callerID for incoming calls. So far my friend Stan has the best photo ID in my address book. I won't include it here but it's very funny.
7. Contacts. The contacts/address book app is really sweet and really bad at the same time. It's very easy to call, email and sms your contacts. Contact integration with google maps is just magical. But the iPhone doesn't have contact search (yet).
8. Super iPod. Listening to music on iPhone is awesome. Coverflow is dreamy.
Incoming phone calls fade out the music perfectly. iPhone headphones also has a mic so you can talk on them as well. Even though I've been an ipod owner since the beginning of time, I didn't always carry my ipod with me. with iphone, i do. And that's excellent.
9. Form factor/durability/stability. The iPhone is solid. Hasn't crashed on me once. The keyboard does slow down every so often but not bad. Form factor is outrageous. Screen seems very durable. No scratches after a week or normal use. I do tend to baby this thing a bit though. I don't just throw it on my desk like the blackberry.
10. Dealing with Microsoft Exchange. Email is easy for those of you that use gmail, aol, yahoo, pop3 or imap. Exchange is not easy on iPhone.
By enabling IMAP on the Exchange server, the iPhone works with your corporate email. It's not push email like blackberry though. Instead iPhone can at best fetch every 15 minutes. You can also manually fetch your email. I thought this was going to a headache but I can live with this.
There are two huge problems with iPhone for Exchange users though:
-Calendar and contact sync can only happen locally. And requires a cable. No over the air sync and no bluetooth sync. Sad but true.
-Even worse, any Exchange-based meeting invites sent to you are not received on iPhone. I believe it's because IMAP is for email and can't deal with the calendar protocol in exchange. It's not made for that. I cannot accept or reject an incoming meeting invite from the iPhone mail client. (This doesn't effect meetings I schedule myself obviously). My workaround is to check Outlook Web Access periodically where I can accept/reject mtgs.
So after a week, I've decided to continue using the iPhone as my primary phone. It's far from perfect but at this time I like it the best. And it's fun. I've never felt that way about my Blackberry.
When I travel more than a day, I'm going to keep the Blackberry in my bag just in case meetings suddenly change and I need to stay on top of it in real-time.
But for days in/around the office, quick day trips to nyc and weekends, I'm going all iPhone, all the time.
Several months ago we decided upgrade our website over at Spark.
With our latest fund news, we put up our new website as well.
This will continue to be a work in progress and I'm sure the home page will change a few times by years end. But I'm very happy with our latest release.
It's much easier to navigate, it's cleaner and it's searchable. You can subscribe to our news feed as well.
My favorite part is that the "news" section is powered by Wordpress.
Now we can add cool Spark and/or or portfolio related videos, audio, widgets, photos etc. This is, of course, in addition to current Spark and portfolio company news. And we will have blog posts as well from various Spark folks.
Many thanks to Sunil who developed the new site. He's a super guy and one talented dude.
I just realized that I've missed a bunch of text messages that some of my friends & colleagues have sent me.
The best way to text my mobile phone is either send me an email or send me a direct message on twitter (prefer the latter). You can do this from the twitter website or even better, send a txt to 40404 and then in then type in "D bijan <your message here> "
Please do not send an sms directly to my mobile number
This weekend we met up with Lauren's roommates (katie, beth and gina), their husbands and all 11 of our respective kids
Special thanks to Gina and John who hosted this 3 day event at their house. The only thing better than the food and weather was the company. The kids/parents relay race in the pool was a riot and so was the family water polo match. Weekend was a blast.
I didn't take as many photos as I should have from the weekend. Katie did a better job and I hope she sends me hers soon :)
One of the things I'm missing in my iPhone experiment so far are the little keyboard shortcuts on the Blackberry. Especially punctuation.
My friend Chris from Apple sent me this tip last night. Very helpful.
"Did you see the period trick? To get punctuation, you have to bring up that alternate keyboard view, then switch back. You can do that in one step though: touch the key to bring up the alternate numeric keyboard, slide over to the period (or whatever punctuation key), then let go. The key you want will be typed and you're dropped back to the alphabetic keyboard immediately. Neat-o. :-) "
Anyone have any other cool little tips for us former/current Blackberry folks?
Few observations after day 1.
-On the blackberry keyboard you can pretty much strike the keys at any angle. I often come in on the side if that makes any sense. To get the best performance out of the iPhone keyboard, it's best to come in at almost a 90 degree angle. I'm starting to get pretty good actually.
-This phone is instant conversation piece. I'm almost reluctant taking it out because I end up giving demos. I did last night on the flight from SFO to Denver. And I gave a mini-demo at Starbucks early this morning.
-the bluetooth software is hosed. I can't get it to pair up with my Jawbone headset which is a buzzkill.
I'm going to try and use my iPhone instead of my Blackberry Curve for one week. Going cold turkey.
Starts now.
My friend Chris from Apple showed me how to sync Microsoft Entourage contacts and calendar with Apple iCal and AddressBook. So those things now easily sync to the iPhone inside of iTunes.
And I can now get my work email via imap onto my iPhone. It's not push email but I've set the iPhone to fetch my email every 15 minutes.
Why am I doing this?
Well the iPhone is simply the coolest consumer product that I've seen in years. As I mentioned on iDay, the screen is stunning, WiFi and the browser are killer and having the best ipod on the planet is fantastic. And it's way more fun than my trusty Blackberry.
It's very lightweight and comfortable even though the size may appear a bit daunting.
It will keep track of everything: location, speed, pace, training apps, etc. The display is easy to read. Best of all this thing finds the satellite quickly and locks on to it. Solid. More product info on Garmin's website here.
Garmin ships it with Windows software so you can keep track of all of this great data. Mac users need a bit more creativity. I found a bunch of 3rd party Mac apps for it. I had good luck with Ascent GPS. Connect the Garmin to the Mac via USB and the data automatically imports into Ascent.
I exported the data from Ascent (two seconds) and then uploaded it to MotionBased (4 seconds) which then gives you a bunch of additional features. All of these steps may sound complicated but it's really not. And if you are using Windows, it's even easier (sad but true).
Here is one of the charts that you get from MotionBased (click image to see larger version). This was my run in San Francisco yesterday.
But since the iPhone launch I've given at least 6 demonstrations of Google Maps on a Blackberry.
So if you have a blackberry and you aren't running Google Maps than you are missing out.
It works just like google maps in Firefox but it's integrated with the phone
You can type in for example "Starbucks near 02116" and get a map, address etc. And in just one click your phone can call the number. More info here.
Or just point your blackberry browser to www.google.com/gmm
Google SMS is also killer. I use it at least once a week. It's crazy simple and super fast. It works on any phone but on a blackberry or iPhone its absolutely yummy. Here's how it works.
These guys have been around for awhile but I only recently started listening to them.
I really like the song Pushover
and just ordered their latest record.
I'm loving that the band makes their songs available for free on their website. Full length and high quality mp3s. And they have a group on flickr too.
Well since my earlier post about a month ago, I've been running and biking on a regular basis. At least 4 days a week. Sometimes more.
I still have a long way to go but I'm making some progress. I don't know if it's the new toys/gear, the accountability of this blog or just the feeling like I'm getting older and I gotta do something.
This evening I went out and ran 4 miles (nike+ chart below).
It was a slow pace but it felt so good to work up a sweat.
It's easy to see why I love being in business with the gang from N3. They are talented, they deeply believe in what they are doing and it shows. And they are just great guys.
I've been thinking about this topic lately as it relates to blogging.
My blog is a personal journal for me that I like to share with others. It helps me learn, rant, share my kids lives with my friends and family, talk about startups and share ideas. Mostly it's fun or I wouldn't do it.
Sometimes I hold back on sharp issues as it relates mostly to startups or products. But I think that my openness is how I've met a bunch of people. Here on this blog and all of my various profiles around the web.
But I know there are lots of folks that don't like sharing their thoughts publicly or being part of the public conversation. I know my wife reads my blog but she has never posted a blog comment. I get them at home :) In fact, the vast vast majority of the feedback I receive from my posts come in email or offline chats.
It seems that this is happening all over the web. There is still a big difference in the number of public voices vs private voices. Think about reviews on tripadvisor or amazon. Clearly most people read vs write.
I wish that some of my close friends would start blogging. They have such a unique, intelligent perspective. But to date they have held off. And some have started but they haven't kept up. Maybe blogs take up to much time. Fortunately there are new, easy options like Tumblr that should bring these folks online.
But privacy is important as well. I see it at home with my daughter Sophia (8). She keeps a diary that she writes in several times a week. It's extremely valuable to her and extremely private. She even hides it when she's not writing in it. It would be tragic if she lost it or if someone else read it. Lauren keeps a private journal as well.
I wonder how many private bloggers are out there. Folks that are active at blogging and linking but keep their posts behind a password. Their voice and content however valuable is comfortable under lock and key. And yet they wouldn't trade this privacy for anything.
In a world that is opening up faster than ever before, there will always be a place for privacy.
Sometimes its easy to overlook something so basic and so important.
I'm having a ton of fun with the camera on my new blackberry curve.
The resolution is nothing like my canon rebel xt or even our sd800is. But I always have my blackberry with me. (I'm writing this blog post on the Curve).
And while we are up at acadia national park and bar harbor this weekend I'm taking lots of photos with all of our cameras. I intentionally left my laptop at home.
So the only one photos from our vacation on flickr at this moment are the ones from the blackberry curve. It a breeze to email those photos from the blackberry to my flickr account (see my flickr sidebar badge).
The blackberry Curve accepts microSD cards (up to 4gigs). And it has a mini usb connector. It would be super cool if I could connect my canon cameras to the blackberry, transfer the pix and then upload/email them to flickr.
Has anyone created such an app for the blackberry yet? It should be possible.
We are going to Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor in Maine. Tomorrow through Sunday.
I'm really looking forward to it. It's supposed to be a beautiful place.
Blogging will be light. But I'll probably be twittering so check out my twitter badge on the right sidebar or here is my profile page on twitter. And I'm sure I'll upload a photo or two to flickr during the trip.
I'm currently working on an investment in a very early stage company. it's likely to happen and I'm looking forward to telling you all about it soon :)
There were a bunch of issues influencing the decision about how much money this company needs. Control, ownership, funding requirements now, funding requirements over time, etc.
Thankfully the founders and investors are on the same page.
This is an easier conversation in an early stage company where the founders have already built an initial version of their product.
It would have been a more challenging & speculative conversation if the founders had a vision and no early product.
We invest in both types of companies but the funding amount conversation is always easier for everyone in the former, not the latter.
We took the ferry over to the islands. We had never been there before but it was much fun. First we went to George Island, took a tour of Fort Warren and heard all about the lady in black legend.
After lunch we then took a ferry over to Lovell Island and hung out at the beach. Total blast. A few hours later and we randomly ran into our neighbors and their kids.
After returning back to Boston we walked over to the North End and had dinner at Giacomo's. The spicy calamari was awesome. It was worth the wait.
And that dinner was last night in SF with a group of bloggers that care about consumer products, consumer electronics, personal computing, web services and open source software. Last night Peter told people about his company, Bug Labs which has been in stealth mode for well over a year.
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