Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. By now many of you know the Harlem Shake but what you may not appreciate is the broader trend behind the video and it has mirrored my general views on how TV will work in the future. Harlem Shake is a YouTube phenomenon that in just 2 weeks has gone from nothing to on air on both Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert and collectively the Harlem Shake has been viewed around 200 million times.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 24, 2013

People usually get the really big ideas wrong. That's why you can't crowdsource signals to invest in venture capital--because most people don't see big things coming. Few people ever thought that there would be a need for a personal computer in the home. Yet, the Segway was supposed to change our world as we knew it. Lots of people thought Twitter was a pretty dumb idea, too.

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Gust

FEBRUARY 17, 2013

Image via Facebook. Go-to people get things done. As an entrepreneur, you need these people, and you need to be one, if you expect your startup to be successful. That may be easier said than done, since resumes do not tell the story, and without real nurturing, the best people won’t stay around long. To highlight how rare this breed is, Jeffrey Gandz of the Richard Ivey School of Business relates a quote from a new CEO in a large company, “I have more than 1000 people in my head office org

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Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 15, 2013

Surely you’ve been exposed to articles, courses and lectures about various styles of management, and how each is appropriate for some companies and for some levels of organization and at some times. For example, a consensus-building leader works well in that style until someone yells “fire!,” and the emergency requires a dictatorial style of management to act quickly, protecting lives.

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strategy

Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 12, 2013

Peter Thiel and Gary Kasparov wrote in the Financial Times about “Our dangerous illusion of tech progress”. The main point of the article is quoted below: [We are living in an era of] cautiousness far too satisfied with incremental improvements. Our ability to do basic things such as protect ourselves from earthquakes and hurricanes, to travel and to extend our lifespans is barely increasing [since the 1960s].

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

I am fond of quoting that about 70% of my investment decision of an early-stage company is the team. My rationale is simple: everything goes wrong and only great teams can respond to competitors, markets, funding environments, staff departures, PR disasters and the like. Final startup grind from msuster. How you build out your team in the first few years can have a huge impact on the trajectory of your company.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 12, 2013

Brooklyn Bridge Ventures became the largest investor in Editorially last fall and I couldn’t be more excited to finally be able to tell you about it. The round includes Lerer Ventures, who participated with the same level of support, Betaworks and a host of experienced angel investors from the design and creative community. When Cameron Koczon introduced me to the company, he said they had the “best starting web team he’s ever seen.

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Gust

FEBRUARY 10, 2013

Image via Stock.xcng. For most new high-tech products, the first customers are always “early adopters.” The conventional wisdom is that early adopters are the ideal target for new products, to get business rolling. I see two pitfalls with any concerted focus on early adopters; first, the size of this group may not be as large as you think, and secondly, their feedback may lead you directly away from your real target market of mainstream customers.

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Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 21, 2013

So, we’ve discussed why it is important to build consensus in an organization in most every major decision. To do so, a CEO must be able to relinquish some degree of power, overriding decisions made by consensus only with some thought and certainly with an explanation to those involved. A manager secure in the position should never fear empowering direct reports to make decisions that fall within the resources allocated to them and within the budget agreed to with them.

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startup

Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 21, 2013

Marketing is one of those words without meaning. Or at least a consistent meaning for most people. Recently, I met a very bright marketer who broke down a few of the different marketing disciplines and matched them to a freemium sales funnel. His framework is a stroke of genius. I’ve drawn it below. The Four Disciplines of Funnel Marketing. The triangle on the left is a standard freemium customer conversion process.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

The other day I set a personal best in the 4mi NYRR Gridiron classic, coming in at 26:16 for a pace of 6:34min/mi. I finished 203rd out of over 5600 people who ran. One of my Twitter friends asked me for tips on improving pace. My answer "Run faster." :). Ok, so it was a wiseass answer. Obviously, people are looking for the answer to "How do I run faster?

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Let me not bury the lede. I’m super excited to announce that GRP Partners led the investment in Ethan Anderson’s new company MyTime (link has LA-based merchants but will give you a good feel for the product). I am taking the lead from GRP and we also invested alongside a number of friends including Dave McClure, Dave Tisch, Ben Smith (Merchant Circle), Brian Lee (ShoeDazzle, LegalZoom), Jason Calacanis, Evan Rifkin, Jennifer Lum, Jay Weintraub and a whole host of other angels.

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Gust

FEBRUARY 3, 2013

Robert Jordan image via HowTheyDidIt.com. Entrepreneurs are a notoriously stubborn (some say confident) group of people, so I see many of them making the same mistakes that predecessors have made. Thus I’m convinced that it’s useful for all of you to step back from time to time, and listen to some sage advice from people who have been there and enjoyed success.

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financing

Gust

FEBRUARY 5, 2013

I suspect this is one of those provocative posts that gets misquoted, misaligned and misunderstood, and definitely not to be taken at face value. Still, read Avoiding Undue Diligence: My Strange Approach To Angel Investing , in which Dharmesh Shah argues against due diligence in angel investment. . I don’t subscribe to the idea in the title.

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angel investing investing investment 121

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2013

The other day I was at a Mercedes dealership. Unfortunately my wife was hit head on in December by a woman who lost control of her car. It was time to get a new car and my wife’s requirements were: The safest thing on the road. As many air bags as possible. I researched the pricing of the car at TrueCar – not because we’re an investor – but because it gives you complete price transparency over what other people in your area paid for a car.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 11, 2013

I recently stumbled upon a physical copy of the Economist that had the following chart: I found it so striking to see these companies all stacked up together, and was surprised that my first thought was “Who would want to be Facebook in this scenario?” In fact, I wondered, if you through Microsoft into this mix, with nearly $70B in cash (more than Facebook’s market cap), and a significant foothold in homes through Xbox, where you would place them?

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 20, 2013

Let me first say that I am absolutely honored to get asked to speak anywhere. I love it. I don't really care how large the event is--if you put me in front of a curious audience and give me a topic I'm passionate about, I'll do my best to share what I've learned and try to inspire. That being said, one of my least favorite things in the entire world is a panel prep call.

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technology

Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 20, 2013

Last night I spoke at the Enterprise Tech VC Panel. We discussed five trends in the seed market and the outlook for 2013. These are the five most important trends for 2013, in my view. MicroVC Funds Have Doubled Their Assets. Call it micro-VC or mega-seed fund, there’s a new investor class which raises funds between $50 and $100M to invest in seed-stage companies.

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Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

If asked to describe the characteristics of a successful freemium business, I might highlight three things: effective community marketing, command of new distribution platforms, and a paid product users love that is priced by usage. Look no further than ZenDesk, Evernote, Expensify, Dropbox. Each of them has built a vibrant user base using freemium products.

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Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 14, 2013

Successful startups are money machines: they ingest a dollar of investment and produce more than a dollar in revenue. There are three steps to build a money machine: Find or create a product many people will use. Convince customers to buy the product. Mechanize the two processes above, reducing costs and increasing profitability to finance growth. Startups repeat these three steps many times during their lifespans.

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Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

For sales people, social proof is one of the most powerful forms of influence, as Robert Ciadini proved in his seminal book on the topic. It’s no secret that the best leads are referrals. Second best is the friend who is a customer in common: “Oh, Peter chose Salesforce for his CRM. Maybe I should consider them too.” Social proof confers the trust of a relationship to the salesperson improving close rates.

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opportunity

Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 11, 2013

On a Saturday morning in August of 2006, Sergey Brin and a team of Googlers flew to Los Angeles to meet Tom Anderson and his MySpace team. By the next afternoon, the two founders shook hands on a three year $900M contract. About twelve months later, I found myself as the product manager for the team in Marrakesh, Google’s executive board room, reporting the state of affairs to Eric, Larry and Sergey.

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Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 10, 2013

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, in all likelihood you’re a big fan of “House of Cards.” Netflix designed it that way. With the release of “House of Cards” Netflix began the Moneyball-era of content production. The majority of Netflix subscribers watch Kevin Spacey, political thrillers and David Fincher’s movies. Guess what? “House of Cards” has all three.

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Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 5, 2013

David Brooks has a great op-ed this morning on the Philosophy of Data. He argues that data offers one major advantage and one major drawback. Data enables humans to discover patterns otherwise unobservable by our senses/intuition or patterns that violate human intuition. But the religion of data engenders a fallacy: that everything can and should be measured; and with this data, the best answer will emerge.

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Tomasz Tunguz

FEBRUARY 4, 2013

With a litany of articles in recent months highlighting the number of companies with valuations greater than $1B , I’ve started to wonder about the valuation trends for the highest profile venture backed companies. Venture capitalists are increasing market prices in Series A and Series B rounds aggressively in effort to reap disproportionate returns.

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