May 2012
1 post
6 tags
April 2012
1 post
Bijan Sabet: Should founders meet every single... →
bijan:
One of the hardest things every founder must deal with is finding and hiring the best people. And it only gets more challenging over time. In the early days the founder typically hires folks he/she knows. the early team can often be an opportunity to get the old band back together again …
March 2012
3 posts
Continuations: Offense is the Best Defense for... →
continuations:
Once in a while I find myself in a product or strategy or biz dev discussion at a startup which goes something like: “we are doing xyz to defend against <name of other startup or big company>”. My reaction is to ask whether xyz is also part of what the startup was trying to build in the first…
Morgan Missen: What I'm Reading - Organizations,... →
morganmissen:
Tech Company Culture
Building an Entrepreneurial Startup Culture and Creating a Product Focused Startup Culture - Mike Karnjanaprakorn, CEO of Skillshare, a company that knows who they are and where they want to go.
How Tumblr Created a Design Culture With No…
November 2011
1 post
This and That: Why is NYC great and Boston sucks? →
santopoliti:
If I ever sit on another panel to discuss “Why is NYC great and Boston sucks?” I am going to throw up. This was the topic at the NVCA panel discussion I participated today as a budding NEVCA board member (NEVCA: New England Venture Capital Association not to be confused with the NVCA: National…
1 tag
content is king, context is the f'n boss
Friend: just pump out good content or something
Me: content is king
Friend: marketing is queen
Friend: but context is the f'n boss
Me: true
Me: gotta hustle
3 tags
why isn't this from the #usa?
Lately, I ask myself “is this from China?” Perhaps I should rephrase the question and think “Why isn’t this from the USA?”
The former is a popular question that more and more people are paying attention too. Perhaps it’s the heightened awareness of workers’ rights and conditions globally, a factor that holds merit. However, I believe more and more people ask the question “is this from China?”...
October 2011
3 posts
2 tags
blog platform
When I started blogging I picked tumblr. However, more then a year ago (give or take) I switched to posterous because I liked the ease of the facebook and twitter integration for comments. Plus their iPhone app was better at the time.
Since Posterous threw me a curveball and totally redesigned their UX I tried to adapt and give it a shot. Posterous now feels overly complicated so I will be...
September 2011
1 post
how I got my foot in the door (two years ago,...
Two years ago today, I stuck my foot in the door at LocaModa. In my first blog post, No Free Lunch, I discuss how it took me over a year of continually following up with Steve King before he gave me a shot as an unpaid intern that lasted three months before I was offered a fulltime position. I thought I would share the email chain that got me where I am today. Steve,We last spoke in...
August 2011
1 post
The Web Outside » Blog Archive » #HereNow: A New...
#HereNow: A New LocaModa App Social media never stands still. In the past few weeks, foursquare has updated their APIs and they have recently announced their events feature. This is a big deal for any company focused on place-based social media. So foregoing summer cookouts and coding through the night, our engineering team has developed LocaModa HereNow,...
July 2011
1 post
bijan sabet: Leaving money on the table →
bijan:
I spend a lot of my time recruiting the best people I can find to join our portfolio companies.
These days one subject comes up frequently - namely, “leaving money on the table”.
Some of the folks being recruited have vested a subset of their total equity and if they leave their current…
June 2011
1 post
May 2011
1 post
The Monster In Your Head » Work-Life Balance is...
Loved Jerry’s latest post: In our vain effort to assuage the guilt of not being at the other end of work-life seesaw (regardless of which end we find ourselves on), we end up neither here nor there. Remember running back and forth on the seesaw trying to stand legs apart in the center, one foot in each world, getting both ends to balance? I remember the nasty bump I got in that vain effort. ...
March 2011
2 posts
“When we started, we thought we were looking for smart people, but it turned out...”
– Paul Graham - Money Man - Entrepreneur.com (via bijan)
Hello World. Finally.
I know nothing about coding except for some jargon I’ve picked up around the office. I have a lot of ideas but none of the experience or knowledge to build. I’m sick of dreaming. I want to build. So, I finally got around to downloading the iOS SDK and coded my first application. It may not look like much, but it’s a start and I’ll chalk this one up on the board....
February 2011
1 post
Oh yes. 24oz of awesomeness
January 2011
3 posts
Hope they don't mind my bean boots in my meetings....
Taken at MBTA South Station
Some thoughts about failure
Many people suffer from a fear of failure. I know people that use this fear as a way to avoid risks. They won’t take a job at an early stage startup. Or they will sell a company early because they are afraid of looking and feeling bad if it ultimately doesn’t turn out well. There are countless examples of letting this fear get the better of you. And I know other folks that use this...
Everything will be reinvented
I’m not a fan of Facebook as a product. I have an account that I rarely use. I have the iPhone app that I’ll occasionally open to look at pictures friends have uploaded. I don’t use their groups, I don’t user their apps and I don’t poke anybody. But I am a fan of Facebook, the company. And they did something this week that I think is very interesting and which put an exclamation point on an...
December 2010
2 posts
Early Christmas present! New goggles for the ski...
Todd Dagres Tumblog : D Bag of the Year
It’s that time of year again. The time when the Yearly honors are bestowed. One of the best known is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. The annual magazine cover used be ”Man of the Year” but the PC police replaced “Man” with “Person.” I suspect at some point it will be “Organism of the Year.” We don’t want to leave out animals and plants- that’s not PC. So I thought I would add my...
November 2010
5 posts
3 tags
Mayflower Beach, Thanksgiving 2010
Below are some photos taken on Thanksgiving Day at Mayflower Beach on the Cape with my Nikon N80. See the full gallery on posterous
4 tags
uncensored: @colinkane
Colin created this LocaModa application and I thought I’d help him out some more (click bottom left for fullscreen). He’s preforming tonight at Comix in NYC where this will be live and he will be in Boston on December 4th. You can also participate from the web here: http://goo.gl/KC69a
November Surf Trip
See and download the full gallery on posterousMy brother and I drove up to Maine this past Saturday for a morning surf trip. I dusted off my old Nikon N80 and snapped a few photos from the trip (one roll). The air was colder than the sea and the swells were north of seven feet at times. A pretty rough session but definitely felt good to get out there.
A VC: Your Worst Enemy Is Yourself
One mistake I see startups make a lot is getting too focused on what is going on around them. They spend too much time trying to figure out what their competitors are going to do. They watch the next hot startup with jealousy and it reminds them of when they were that “shiny new thing” and they want that back. The reality of startups is that there is so much opportunity out...
3 tags
Scaling Sales: Arming & Aiming – A’s, B’s & C’s |...
If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, or subscribe via email. Thanks for visiting! This article was originally posted in a much more concise version over GigaOm if you prefer the shorter version. This is part of my ongoing Sales & Marketing Series. In the first part of this post I talked about how sales in a startup is often...
October 2010
5 posts
4 tags
Startup Sales – Why Hiring Seasoned Sales Reps May...
Excerpt from Both Sides of The Table Evangelical sales – Understanding startup sales people and process. The specific things you’re looking for are: intelligence, ability to think creatively, ability to work with customers on vaguely defined problems, ability to assemble an ROI business case (with a template already created by marketing) and above all else the ability to listen, summarize...
@mrskutcher Is More Attractive In Person -...
Hey, I’m Greg Stellato, a Sales Planner at LocaModa and this is my first company blog post. In addition to sales planning I also speak with brands and agencies most of the day, handle some of our social media and irritate the engineers with my lack of headphones. I grew up in the digital world and everything in it comes second nature to me. I hope you enjoy the post. Razorfish, one of...
Slap A QR Code On That Product So That People Can...
via techcrunch.com Blurring the lines further between the digital & physical worlds
4 tags
Why your brand should know about place-based...
Note: I compiled the data below from our platform and multiple third parties. The original audience consisted of major alcohol brand executives & their agencies. However, on its own, the information is quite fascinating. I hope to add more to this post soon. LocaModa launched their Foursquare application, sponsored by the Verizon DRIOD1 App Store on April 8, 2010 in more than 600...
"Be a maker and stay far away from takers." - Fred... →
Short post from Fred but a valuable one.
September 2010
2 posts
Getting A No by Fred Wilson →
“I always make myself feel better by saying to myself “this deal is going to be huge and the best revenge will be when they are kicking themselves for saying no.” - Fred Wilson
“The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed...”
– Max Levchin, PayPal cofounder: FailCon: Failing Forward To Success : NPR
(saw this inspiring quote on my friend @nabeel’s facebook profile. can’t link to it but I’ll leave that topic for another day)
This is a great quote and inspiring as Bijan stated.
July 2010
1 post
“I think the only lessons you ever actually learn in life are the ones you pay...”
– Michael Laine’s comment on AVC
A VC: Sunk Costs
(via fred-wilson)
June 2010
1 post
“Venture capital is best learned in an apprenticeship model.”
– Fred Wilson - A VC (via bijan)
May 2010
1 post
LocaModa at Mashable Media Summit →
I’ll be heading down to NYC for the Mashable Media Summit with a few other locamodians. Mashable will be using LocaModa’s foursquare app… pretty sweet.
April 2010
7 posts
Official 4SQ Party, BarCamp Boston, and... →
Our LocaModa/Foursquare App was on display at the Official Foursquare Day Party at the Rivington Hotel on 4/16, we sponsored BarCamp Boston at MIT’s Stata Center on 4/17 and 4/18, and we welcomed to our newest network partner,SportsBar Digital!
5 tags
140 Conference: Streaming realtime twitter,...
LocaModa Foursquare Application streaming realtime Twitter, Flickr & Foursquare info for the 140 Conference in NYC.
4 tags
Foursquare Day Wiffiti Application
15 tags
15 tags
LocaModa Gives Away Custom 4SQ Apps for Foursquare... →
As you may have seen on my twitter feed or LocaModa’s Twitter feed, we’re giving away custom LocaModa Foursquare apps to the first 25 venues that tweet using the hashtag#Loca4sqDay! We’ll integrate your venue info, a custom background, and a personalized ‘loca’ for mobile integration… All in celebration of 4/16!
4 tags
LocaModa Foursquare App with Advertising →
Our new Verizon Droid campaign is running in over 600 cafes & bars across the country. The foursquare info changes based on the venue, the Call 2 Action changes based on the venue, the background changes on the region and the dynamic tags are based on the region-groundbreaking my friends, groundbreaking.
All of LocaModa’s applications have the ability for advertising with our BrandLink...
March 2010
8 posts
bijan sabet: Sometimes selling out isn't just... →
Big companies often like to acquire great startups. Sometimes for good reasons or bad reasons. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t.
An overly simple way to think about selling out is comparing the desire to remain independent vs the acquisition price. There are many other factors but…
2 tags
bijan sabet: Scale first, monetize second →
With every (venture backed) consumer web startup there is always the question of when to start thinking about monetization.
If the monthly burn is modest, I usually suggest that startups focus on reaching scale first.
It’s not because I don’t care about revenue or because I embrace “hope as a…
“The one thing technology companies do really well is deal with constant...”
– Andreessen’s Advice To Old Media: “Burn The Boats” (via bijan)
3 tags
bijan sabet: Self Aware →
Last night we went to dinner with some good friends. It was long overdue and I’m glad we did it.
We talked about a bunch of things. One of the things we talked about was our hopes and desires for our kids and the education we want for them.
My friend told us that he thought his own high school…