s t e l l a t o

Now serving social media in Grand Central… (my day job....

Tue, 01 May 2012 14:06:33 -0400

Now serving social media in Grand Central…

(my day job. also my night job.)

https://twitter.com/#!/nyknicks/status/197370475582730242

Bijan Sabet: Should founders meet every single hire?

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:50:59 -0400

Bijan Sabet: Should founders meet every single hire? :

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

…

Continuations: Offense is the Best Defense for Startups

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 12:06:37 -0400

Continuations: Offense is the Best Defense for Startups:

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 ”. My reaction is to ask whether xyz is also part of what the startup was trying to build in the first…

seeing so many great photos of locamoda at the foursquare sxsw...

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:27:20 -0400

seeing so many great photos of locamoda at the foursquare sxsw party.

nickmcglynn:

FOURSQUARE PARTY! (Taken with Instagram at Cedar Street Courtyard)

Morgan Missen: What I'm Reading - Organizations, Culture and Self-Development

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 13:47:31 -0500

Morgan Missen: What I'm Reading - Organizations, Culture and Self-Development:

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…

This and That: Why is NYC great and Boston sucks?

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:02:51 -0500

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…

content is king, context is the f'n boss

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:55:50 -0400

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

why isn't this from the #usa?

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:26:00 -0400

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?” for one simple reason. Fear. It is the basic emotion that we innately have to detect the threat of danger, a survival mechanism. Fear could easily stem from the raise in unemployment but for whatever the reason, the question that should be asked is “why isn’t this from the USA?”

Either question creates a complex response. I could write about global sourcing and manufacturing and try to explain the investments made by US entities in foreign markets but that’s not where I would like to focus the conversation. I would rather write about the people, cultures, companies and products that are part of a quiet resurgence in American tradition. Those that have honed their skills over generations and those that are just beginning to share their craft. The masons, fabricators, designers, shoemakers, brewers, distillers…the American craftsman.

Over the next few weeks I will pick a platform to build and curate what I intend to be a rich set of photos, videos, stories, experiences and people that are building.

blog platform

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:03:47 -0400

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 switching back to tumblr as my primary tool.

I don’t blog often but that will change over the coming weeks. I plan to add at least one substantial post a week regardless of the topic. I never did find a topic that I wanted to talk about on a regular basis. I explore, share things I like, past experiences and mostly reblog posts I find interesting.

how I got my foot in the door (two years ago, today)

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:31:29 -0400

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 February and it was to early for you to hire an
inexperienced sales guy.
To be candid, I want to join your team and I want to become a
sales/marketing intern. I am fully employed but I still have the
desire to get on the ground floor and do what it takes to help build a
winning product. I have no problem putting in endless hours.I would be more than happy to discuss further when convenient for you.
Cheers-Gregory Stellato

Steve replied with the following;

Greg, you want to sales intern here? Bust your ass, make calls, dial for dollars, send emails, manage campaigns, log hours of database transfer on SalesForce? If yes then let’s get you in. Thing is, when will you find the time seeing as how you’re working full time?How will this work?
SK

I was fully employed but I knew I had to be on the ground floor of a startup even though I had never been. Without anything to lose, I responded with this;

Steve, to give you some perspective, when I was a headhunter I was
working 80 hours, before I discovered the appeal of startups I wanted
to be an investment banker (100 plus hours)… I love espresso and I
want to bust my ass, make calls and be the little sales bitch that
could. I have said it before, I’m hungry and I want to get my foot in
the door…. so I will do whatever it takes to get some exposure and
learn.I’m not sure how things run in the DOOH ad space but I assume it’s not
a 9 to 5 gig. (previous employer) only allows me to work 36.25 hours a
week…. so I have plenty of time on my hands. I get out of work at
4pm, I’m at Central by 4:30 and I can make calls until whenever the
west coast decides to leave the office. I will work weekends, make
calls at lunch…whatever it takes.

Greg Stellato

If you want something, be persistent, target and go for it. There is no such thing as a free lunch and you have to Act as if.

The Web Outside » Blog Archive » #HereNow: A New LocaModa App

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:05:11 -0400

#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, the first digital out-of-home application to compliment foursquare’s events feature.

HereNow has been a concept that we have had for a very long time and something that several clients recommend we build. For reference, we think about what is the best experience from a venue, consumer and then brand perspective and build accordingly. We use social media as a way to build value inside of digital place-based advertising networks (digital out-of-home) with fit for purpose applications. Our fullscreen foursquare application is great for our day-to-day business because our applications are built for schedules that contain a variety of content but in an event setting displaying the Mayor, tips, and total check-ins for more then 30 seconds becomes less then exciting.

That mentality of thinking about the venue first then the consumer has made our products very popular for events whether it’s a concert, NHL game, NBA game, CES or a party with your friends, people love to see their messages on screen and event producers need the ability to moderate.

LocaModa HereNow displays users as they check-in via foursquare front and center alongside their name and where they are from. Behind the scenes, profile photos hit the LocaModa Manager where they can be moderated. The profile photos are then assembled into a background mosaic of check-ins that dynamically updates as more people check-in. The area where the user information is shown rotates with venue safe tips that are controlled in the LocaModa Manager. We have also thought about what will happen when 50 people check-in (swarm!) and so forth. The application displays the appropriate swarm badge when each milestone is reached.

Like all of our applications, LocaModa HereNow includes standard cross-channel ad units that brands can leverage too (skyscraper & fullscreen).

We are already responding to brand and agency demand for the features in LocaModa HereNow so I don’t think we’ll have to wait too long to see this in the wild.

Share and Enjoy:

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via theweboutside.com

bijan sabet: Leaving money on the table

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:44:35 -0400

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…

Thousands of locations are using foursquare check-ins on screens...

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:34:54 -0400

Thousands of locations are using foursquare check-ins on screens already via locamoda (note: I work for LocaModa).

bijan:

I was at Foursquare HQ the other day in NYC. When you check in with the app, your photo gets put on the plasma screen in the reception area. So awesome.

I’d love to see more places use the big screen along with foursquare check ins.

The Monster In Your Head » Work-Life Balance is Bullshit

Thu, 05 May 2011 11:24:47 -0400

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.

The real gift is learning to be present in whatever third you’re living. So when you’re working, work. And when you’re loving, love. And when you’re eating, eat. As the wise old Ram Dass said: Be Here Now.

Being present is a challenge but something I strive to do each day. Some days are easier than others.

via bijansabet.com

Work-Life balance has always been a challenge and I’ve been told several times, ‘put down your phone.’ This is a great post & something I will continue to work on.

"When we started, we thought we were looking for smart people, but it turned out that intelligence..."

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:47:54 -0400

“When we started, we thought we were looking for smart people, but it turned out that intelligence was not as important as we expected. If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student.”

- Paul Graham - Money Man - Entrepreneur.com (via bijan)

Hello World. Finally.

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:44:53 -0500

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. #winning

Oh yes. 24oz of awesomeness

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 07:20:37 -0500

Hope they don't mind my bean boots in my meetings. (conversation starter)

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 06:07:09 -0500

Taken at MBTA South Station

Some thoughts about failure

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:19:43 -0500

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 fear as a motivator for striving to be the best. They try to conquer their fears on a daily basis by paying more attention to their will to create something awesome.

The folks in the latter category have my respect. They are human and they are winning.

In startup land, most early stage companies don’t work out and they fall short of the early founders and early VCs expectation. Big risk and big reward.

Often times the journey itself is the reward. That’s what led me to startups in the first place. I never thought or obsessed about how much my WebTV options would be worth one day. i was more obsessed about whether we could a difference.

The one thing i notice with some VCs and some hiring execs is their sometimes lack of appreciation of failure. Especially when the VC and startup ecosystem requires a huge amount of failure. I look at it differently and wonder about people that have never failed. Just like in skiing, if you don’t fall down it probably means you aren’t trying hard enough.

Instead of dismissing a candidate with, “he/she must not be very good, that company was a failure”, I think it’s much more helpful to pay attention to what that person actually accomplished and attempted to accomplish.

And many times, giving people a second chance or even a third chance can create amazing results.

It can be a challenge but I encourage all of us to be proud of our failures and take the time to learn some valuable lessons.

via bijansabet.com

“Just like in skiing, if you don’t fall down it probably means you aren’t trying hard enough.” - Bijan Sabet. My brother and I have been using this analogy since I can remember. Great post.

Everything will be reinvented

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:08:53 -0500

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 philosophy I hold to firmly; namely, that we’re in the midst of every nation, every industry and every company getting reinvented for a digital future.

I won’t bore you with the details, nor do a claim to fully understand all of the intricacies to the deal, but essentially Facebook, through their transaction with Goldman Sachs, has gone down the path of reinventing what it means to be a publicly traded company. The Facebook IPO story has yet to be written but I tend to agree with Felix that Zuck has accomplished the primary purpose of being a public company, access to capital, via the Goldman special purpose vehicle, without all the overhead of being a public company CEO.

Whether this is the end game for Facebook and their IPO plans is yet to be seen but I respect that they’re looking at the rationale for being a public company with a fresh set of eyes. Reinventing the IPO is a pretty fantastic feet and one I didn’t see coming.

Which leads to my more general observation. I’ve never seen a time where so many markets are ripe for reinvention. I don’t need to look any further than my iPhone to spot a handful of them. Its my:

phone. I really can’t remember the last time I took a call on a landline.

communication. email, txt, twitter, foursquare all native.

camera. I don’t even own a point and shoot anymore,

video camera. Bye bye Flip.

music player. iPod + Pandora, I don’t need much more.

fax machine. I haven’t had to use a real one since downloading ScanR.

flash light. that little flash on an iPhone 4 works so well.

level- totally works for my home improvement projects.

game console. I don’t play xbox or wii, but I love me some angry birds.

navigation device. google maps is the best, true dat, double true

fitness device. goodbye garmin and your crummy bluetooth sticks.

And that’s just on my first two screens.

Reinvention is happening in every market at an accelerating pace. Just in the last two years we’ve seen fundamental shifts in music, gaming, banking, education, government, automobiles, energy, coupons, payments, retail, rental cars, manufacturing, publishing, journalism, just to name a few. My own industry, venture capital, is being reinvented by upstart funds (like OATV) and entirely new funding models, like DST.

Even the mighty Google is looking ripe for disruption in their untouchable search business. As Jeff Atwood points out:

The idea that there could be something wrong with Google was inconceivable to me. Google is gravity on the web, an omnipresent constant; blaming Google would be like blaming gravity for my own clumsiness. But, this is the first time since 2000 that I can recall Google search quality ever declining, and it has inspired some rather heretical thoughts in me — are we seeing the first signs that algorithmic search has failed as a strategy? Is the next generation of search destined to be less algorithmic and more social? It’s a scary thing to even entertain, but maybe gravity really is broken.

The cracks in the foundations of innovations past are becoming more and more apparent. A digital landscape is emerging that is not only opening up new paths to reinvent incumbent businesses, but mashing them up in ways that weren’t possible even 18 months ago.

I don’t mean to come off as some starry eyed huckster but, from my vantage point, we’re living in a very exciting time. If ever there were an opportunity to think big and attack large markets with incumbent players, its now. I’m a believer that in the next 5 years we’re going to see every major industry reinvented in ways we didn’t see coming. I mean, who would have guessed a silly little site for college kids could reinvent the IPO?

via bryce.vc