What to do When a Tech Giant Decides to Eat Your Lunch
An edited version of this post originally ran on TechCrunch. This version has some additional details on a portfolio company I’ve invested in, which are disclosed below. WWDC. The annual Apple event where no real hints about what products they plan to release are floated in the public domain in advance. No private head [...]
Why Twitter Favorites Aren’t Really Your Favorite Tweets
Twitter is an ephemeral service. It’s what I love about Twitter. When I’m in the mood to consume what my world is telling me right now I can “tune in” to Twitter and digest the rapid stream. I don’t really worry about missing stuff. If somebody wanted me to see something they’d @ message [...]
A Few Key People Really Can Make a Huge Difference
This article originally ran on TechCrunch. I’m in Seattle this week. People keep asking me if I’ve “seen anything interesting.” Of course I have. I’m an entrepreneur at heart so I’m always inspired when I hear stories about innovation. I really liked BigDoor, MediaPiston, OpsCode, BuddyTV, SEOMoz and much more. Can’t list them all. But [...]
The Future of Advertising will be Integrated
Banner Ads. They first started in 1994 and are therefore almost as old as the Web itself. They were very effective back then, with the original ad garnering a 78% click-through rate (CTR)! I guess from there we had nowhere to go but down. Nowadays banner ads get on average 0.2% CTR meaning for every [...]
The Magic Midnight Mind Meld
The most common questions I’ve gotten over the past week have been a variant of: Was SXSW worth it? Was it just one big party? Should I go next year? Why do your eyes still look so bloodshot? (And I’ve learned a new term, I arrived home with SxSARS). As you may know I outlined [...]
One Man’s Signal is Another Man’s Noise
After the weekend kerfuffle over AngelList I was reading Brad Feld’s post on Signal vs. Noise. It’s apropos because there is so much noise these days with email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, web shows, etc. that it’s sometimes hard to know when to pay attention and when to keep your head down. Mostly during the [...]
What’s the Real Deal with AngelList?
In case you missed all the kerfuffle this weekend, I posted this blog post originally on TechCrunch. I attempted to do a fair balance job of an increasingly important service – AngelList – started by a friend of mine – Nivi with the feelings of a colleague who I respect – Bryce – who [...]
Why I Invested in Gogii (textPlus) – My First Ever Later Stage Deal
This is a post I’ve been dying to write for 18 months. I invested in LA-based Gogii, one of the fastest growing, most exciting mobile social networking companies you’ve never heard of and maker of a product called textPlus. I know this because you’re not a young teenager. And if you are – what on [...]
Can You Really Build a Great Tech Firm Outside Silicon Valley?
This article originally appeared on TechCrunch. Last year I was on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley meeting with one of the most prominent venture capital firms in the country. We were talking about a company, Factual (disclosure my firm is an investor), which was founded by one of LA’s most talented Internet entrepreneurs, Gil Elbaz, [...]
Why Entrepreneurs & VCs Should Focus on Basecamp, Not the Summit
A few months ago I wrote a post called “Invest in Lines, Not Dots.” It was my investment philosophy that observing teams’ performance over time was far more insightful than reacting to how good of a product demo they do, how good they present Powerpoint slides or how great tech blogs say they are. Equally, I [...]
Making the Internet Smarter at Helping Us
Recommendation Slicing The Internet has a problem. It’s one you know well. The signal-to-noise ratio is getting out of hand. In non-geek speak this means that there is so much information out there now it’s hard to separate the good stuff from the rest. We all now visit UGC sites to learn about products & [...]
On Leadership, Teams, Success & Happiness
Lately the topic of leadership & teams has been coming up a lot in my daily life. Some investors are team focused, others market focused, others seems to look for product / market fit. I’m in the team centric sphere so every investment decision I make first & foremost centers on this plane. Only then [...]
Why Did I Invest in Pose?
What a sweet feeling it was last week to see the launch of the photo sharing site Pose, whose application targets shoppers of apparel. If you don’t know it and own an iPhone (soon Android) please check it out. What I’d like to do is tell you the story of how the investment came to [...]
Data is the Next Major Layer of the Cloud & A Major Victory for Startups
Today Factual announced that it raised $25 million from Andreessen Horowitz & Index Ventures. I believe that this is a major new area of growth & innovation for the Internet as Cloud Services start to form deeper & richer layers. Let me explain. For decades the “layering” of technology has allowed us to develop IT [...]
I’m sticking with Disqus. Here’s Why
By Mark Suster on March 7, 2011
I’ve written before about my love for Disqus. I’m not an investor – I just love the product. So now Facebook has a new commenting system. They’ve been around for a while and when they first announced this initiative I knew the day would come when people would start saying, “should I replace Disqus?” [...]
Posted in Application Software, Featured Posts | Tagged blogging, commenting system, comments, disqus, facebook, Social network, Tech Market Analysis, techcrunch | 1 Response