I do have a few Windows machines left around the house doing utility duty, and it seems each update of Firefox runs slower and slower. Maybe Web browsers are like the government: inevitable bloat.
I’m trying the beta of Safari (Apple’s Web browser) on Windows. It’s got some quirks, but it’s quite zippy (esp. on a fiber Internet connection) — very promising.
In this post from Official Google Blog, David Drummond writes:
So Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.
While I appreciate Google’s openness (certainly relative to Microsoft’s historical behavior) and innovation, I’m enthusiastically applauding any effort that challenges them.
Google’s building an on-line position of dominance not unlike Microsoft’s off-line monopoly. And they’ve earned it: they’ve executed well, they have good technology, they’re incredibly profitable, they’re hiring the best people, and they’re investing heavily in R&D.
But the system works best when there’s competition. Yahoo and Microsoft certainly each have their issues, but anything that’s a threat to Google’s dominance…..it’s all good.
We’re in the middle of building a team for a venture-funded NewCo, and we’re talking to the usual range of candidates to find the first 10 hires.
In addition to the specific skills, we’re also looking for people that can thrive in the startup environment. The easiest folks to consider have been in an early-stage startup before, and the best (in this regard) were #10 or #15 last time around, and are hungry to be #5.
The tougher scenario is someone who’s been at much larger companies. Startups are more intense, riskier and more ambiguous: the chance to change the world and create wealth is balanced by the chance that you’ll be out of business next month. Plans change with opportunities, and the team needs faith and trust in themselves and each other that they’ll figure it out along the way.
Folks that haven’t seen this movie before can find it very stressful, and it may take a lot of management time to keep their head in the game. The core issue is almost always psychological (and irrational). Shutting down the company or cutting back is a real risk, but job loss isn’t — in today’s hot market, good folks can leave on Friday and have a new job on Monday. There’s also a general fear of failure, but you need to accept failure (it’s OK, you know) if you want to succeed.
If you’re thinking about raising money, you may have some friends that want to co-invest. Or, you may have a few folks that you want to recruit as investors.
A carefully chosen set of individual investors can be really helpful at various company stages. They can be mini-advisors, providing help at key junctures: funding, acquisition, strategy, etc. Also, a commitment from “rock star” individuals can give you some additional credibility in raising the main funding round.
If you’re thinking about individuals, it’s important to build it into VC discussion from the beginning. When you’re talking about the size of the round, you should say you intend carve out x% or $y of the Series A for individuals. (Adding individuals at the end of the process is a pain. I just went through this for a company I recently co-founded: the resulting cap-table jostling is energy that should be spent elsewhere. )
Other things to keep in mind:
Finally, get all of the details to the attorneys well before closing, including entity names (many individuals invest through an LLC or a estate planning trust). Nothing kills the excitement of closing a round of funding like a holdup from a $25k investor.
Well, I finally found the Leatherman Fuse multi-tool I had gotten for Christmas. It was in my laptop bag, and had (unknowingly) flown with me a bunch of times across the country.
So much for crack TSA x-ray screening.
I met a small group of entrepreneurs a year or two back that had built a social networking site. I asked them, “how is the better/different than MySpace, which is already dominating?”
They said, “Our design is more scalable.”
I paused, and said, “You’re pretty far away from earning the right to have a scalability challenge.”
The problem was that they had worked on a down-the-road problem (scalability) taking energy from the immediate problem (getting users). It’s a common way to fail in startups (I’ve done it myself): spending too much time solving future problems, instead of solving the “now” problems.
And now we know why Netflix opened offered movie “rentals” for unlimited streaming: Apple’s announcement yesterday about moving into on-line movie rentals.
All of this competition and choice is great for consumers. With Apple, Netflix, Amazon and others duking it out for movies, we’ll have great options with great features (like HD) at fair prices.
And, this is a great example of why there’s nervousness about network neutrality.
A very plausible scenario: watch a bunch of Apple HD movies, and Comcast dings you with a “too much bandwidth” warning for the month and threatens to disconnect you. Of course, you can watch all of the Comcast-provided movies you want — is that fair?
Today is Jan 15th, and Q4 2007 estimated tax payments are due (in the US). If you’re self-employed, you estimate your tax liability during the year and make “withholding” payments (4) along the way.
If you’re self-employed, you have the privilege of paying two additional taxes (on top of income tax): self-employment tax (12.4%) and Medicare (2.9%). The SE tax phases out at $94,000, but the Medicare tax applies to your entire self employed income.
If you’re consulting, keep in mind when setting your rates that your marginal tax rate (combined state and federal) may be over 50%.
Google’s rumored to be updating their page ranking again. They adjust rankings from time to time to improve search results and make it harder to game the ranking system.
These updates illustrate the problem of depending on organic traffic (e.g. clicks generated from showing up in the search results) vs paid ad links. You can do a great “search engine optimization” (SEO) job and get ranked #1 when you search for “fios battery“, but then Google can change everything and you drop to #7. Clicks will drop off accordingly.
I’m usually skeptical of business plans that depend heavily on organic traffic. Organic traffic should be viewed as “icing” — great if you can get it, but not critical for the business to work.
Why do we need electronic voting machines, really?
When we started Open Market in 1994 and built one of the first eCommerce systems, we realized we might be opening pandora’s box for fraud. At that time, you could steal all of the off-line credit card numbers you wanted, with surreptitious swipes, receipts (before XXX7307 was printed), etc.
The problem is the Internet enables anonymous, scalable, and transferable fraud. Attacks are effectively anonymous because they’re impossible to trace. Automation makes stealing 10,000 cards as easy as 1. And transferability lets one attacker develop an attack, and give it to 1,000 others (often with less skill, like script kiddies). (Compare this to lock-picking: difficult to do without being physically present, difficult to pick extra locks, and hard to teach someone else to do.)
Pure electronic voting introduces these same problems, without the corresponding benefits. Elections are infrequently occurring events, with high stakes and incentives to tamper.
What’s wrong with optically scanned paper ballots? Machines can help with counting, but there’s always a way to verify.