Over six years ago: "I'd like some assurance that they’re going to last through the summer, much less two years." — # 06/20/2007
Some thoughts from Marc Andreessen on hiring practices. The top line items about what to look for in a candidate are great, but I found this point particularly important:
Have a written hiring process.
Whatever your hiring process is—write it down, and make sure everyone has a copy of it, on paper.
It’s continually shocking how many startups [...]
Cables are the new toner. Or wait, is toner the new cables? In any event, the comments on Calacanis's question re: HDMI cables are enlightening. — # 01/15/2007
Since the Long Tail concept was so popular in 2006, why not give it a kick on the way to 2007? "Of course a couple of those top 10 sites are actually places like YouTube and MySpace where large amounts of user generated content drives traffic and then deposits money in hands not of the creators, but instead in the coffers of the large corporate landlords. Nicholas Carr aptly compares this setup to sharecropping." — # 01/2/2007
From four years ago. Dave Winer on when to give away technology: "Where you want competition, give away the technology. Where you want to be competitive, keep it to yourself." — # 01/2/2007
In October Sevin Rose decided to return the moneys raised for their Fund X because they felt the Venture Capital model was broken. Fred Wilson agreed in part, but disagreed in a much larger part. As part of his end-of-year posts, Fred lays out the differences in the Web startup model between Web1.0 and Web2.0. In short, it's a lot cheaper to start up, but the total cost to build a viable business hasn't come down a huge amount (if at all). There are some exceptions (there always are), but in general Web startups still seem to require about $20mm all told. — # 12/21/2006
Via Kos, we have a much needed reminder that you don’t need the extended warranty. There are a few major exceptions to this rule, but as Consumer Reports has found repeatedly, you don’t need the extended warranty. Kos closes the loop by noting the BusinessWeek report from 2004 that extended warranties are what drive the [...]
The intellectual lodestar of the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill writes about the great wealth transfer in Rolling Stone. "Lately, however, we have experienced a death of outrage. Thanks to the right's well-funded and organized effort, corporate executives now feel no shame in lining their pockets with huge bonuses and gigantic stock options. Such self-dealing is justified, they say: Greed is what made America great, and greedy executives are exactly what corporate America needs." — # 12/15/2006
Clay Shirky has just about enough of all the Second Life crap. I couldn't agree more. I've played two MMORPGs (which Second Life appears desperate not to call itself), the Sims Online and Ultima Online and I can't figure out how Second Life is much different from Sims Online. "Like video phones, which have been just one technological revolution away from mass adoption since 1964, virtual reality is so appealingly simple that its persistent failure to be a good idea, as measured by user adoption, has done little to dampen enthusiasm for the coming day of Keanu Reeves interfaces and Snow Crash interactions." — # 12/12/2006
Anil Dash disects the reasons for Google Answers failing and AskMeFi succeeding. "In the tradition of "good fences make good neighbors", I'd submit that smart cops make for smart communities." — # 12/12/2006
Bambi Francisco has a good article on Craigslist today. "'It's about our values,' [Craig] said. Those values are 1) Give a person a break 2) Treat other people like you want to be treated." — # 12/12/2006
Jason Fried on actually getting to work while at work. — # 12/8/2006
Max on Social Security and how he tries to influence economic policy. We need a lot more of Max out there. "Pardon my francais, but if I refuse a shit sandwich, it's not because I'm not hungry." — # 11/27/2006
From this past summer, an interview with Bob Rubin in the Nation. Also, a speech Galbraith the Younger never got to give on similar topics. — # 11/27/2006
Hugh updates the Hughtrain. 384 words down from 4,500. "6. The future of advertising is internal. The hardest part of a CEO's job is sharing his enthusiasm with his colleagues, especially when a lot of them are making one-fiftieth of what he is. Selling the company to the general public is a piece of cake compared to selling it to the actual people who work for it." — # 11/23/2006
At about 11 minutes of CalacanisCast Beta 5, "Offices create two things: commutes and politics." — # 11/22/2006
A new top 100 list! The Atlantic publishes their top 100 most influential Americans. As they said in their email, "Let the debates begin." Plenty to debate here, but I loved this one-sentence description of Woodrow Wilson (#10): "He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy." — # 11/21/2006
Via Hugh, from the Chron: "Over and over we ask our high performers to go above and beyond, making their jobs tough and burning them out at a terrible pace. Meanwhile, low performers often get easier jobs because their bosses dread dealing with them and may avoid them altogether." — # 11/20/2006
Max and Brad weigh in on Hoyer vs. Murtha for Majority Leader. Brad, "So the House Majority Leader will either be Steny Hoyer, who plans to rekindle the long-lost love affair between the Democratic Party and corporate lobbyists, or Jack Murtha, whose foremost priority appears to be an expansion of the national-security state, at the expense of all else." — # 11/13/2006
Scoble is right to say that Facebook isn’t worth as much as YouTube.
Don’t miss Ballmer’s question here: “[You’ve got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they’re hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion?” That’s Microsoft’s engineering culture coming through. Clearly Ballmer believes he can build YouTube for less.
The thing is, YouTube is two [...]